Leaving Time by Jodie Picoult

Jodie Picoult has taken me into the world of metaphysics of  Serenity Jones and the world of elephants of Thomas and Alice Metcalf in the book, Leaving Time. I am on page 165.  The main characters are Jenna Metcalf, a 13 year old teen; Alice Metcalf, a scientist/elephant researcher and Jenna's Mom; Serenity Jones, formerly a celebrity psychic, and Virgil Stanhope, an alcoholic private detective and former cop. So far the story has been told by these 4 major characters. Alice, however, has been missing for 10 years. Jenna is looking for her and has recruited the other two characters, the psychic and the private investigator, to find out if she is dead or alive. If she is alive, why did she leave? Why did she leave her daughter?

The pace of the story started off slowly but once Jenna met Serenity the pace of the story has been moving along quickly. There is a back story to Serenity and she is intrigued by Jenna's case. There is a back story to Virgil who was briefly familiar with the missing Alice.  The missing Alice and the accidental death of an employee at the Metcalf's elephant sanctuary have haunted him for 10 years. It was fairly easy to get him on board to help find Alice. He is,of course, skeptical of Serenity.

There is a whole host of facts about elephants in the book. I have learned a herd of elephants are led by the matriarch. Elephants can only breathe through their trunk not their mouth. Elephants really do seem to have long memories, they think, feel, hold grudges and experience grief.

The themes in the book seem to be grief and memory. Interestingly, Thomas Metcalf has very little memory and has been institutionalized just around the time of his wife's disappearance.  If you have lost someone you loved through death, this book will tug at your heart as you read the psychic's point of view in relation to death and the spirit world.

At this point, this is not my favorite Picoult book but she always has a twist in the end so I am anticipating an interesting twist.  I am on page 165 and I have more to read. I could change my mind.

My all time favorite books by Picoult are My Sister's Keeper and Nineteen minutes.  I also enjoyed reading Second Glance which included elements of the paranormal world like this book

This is What I'm Reading on Freaky Friday

It's Freaky Friday astronomically speaking; it's the day when all sorts of things are happening in the sky - solar eclipse, super Moon, spring equinox  (first day of Spring).  I am reading The Midwife's Tale by Sam Thomas.

Will, a minor character in the story says, "... Parliament accuses the King of tyranny, the King calls Parliament rebels. Wives are murdering their husbands, and mothers discarding their infants into privies - the world is on its head." I have entered into Will's world and I am finding this historical novel very interesting.

The setting is York in 1644 during the reign of King Charles 1. The dialogue is realistic.  The story-line is fascinating. The protagonist is Lady Bridget Hodgson, a very bold and independent widow, who is also the midwife. The story is told from her point of view. After reading this book, readers will get a clear picture of how women, servants and those with physical disabilities were treated during this period. The midwife is quietly investigating whether or not her friend Esther Cooper murdered her husband Stephen Cooper.

Our Book Club Selections 2015

It's been a while. Let me share a list of the books we have read and discussed this year and of those we intend to read:

February 20
The King’s Deception by Steve Berry
Interesting premise in this story, what if Queen Elizabeth 1 were really a male in disguise? Was this why she never married? Reference is made to Bram Stoker's book, The Imposters, which is all about this royal conspiracy. 

March 20
The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman 
This was a sad story but I could not put this book down.  Two people meet as their grandchildren get married.  The grandfather of the groom recognizes the grandmother of the bride.  They have a history together in Prague and were separated because of Nazi occupation.   This story is based on the real life situation of couple, the writer heard about, who were married before World War 11, separated and reunited at a wedding. 

April 17
MidWife's Tale (Midwife's Mysteries #1) by Sam Thomas.  
Oh boy, sounds like I am about to embark on another mystery series. Harlot's Tale is the second in the series followed by Witch Hunter's Tale . Amazon says this series is similar to the historical fiction by  C. J. Sansom; the  Matthew Shardlake series.

May 15

The Oath by John Lescroart 

Have you read any of these? Please share.

Our November Book Club Selection: the Eccentric King Ludwig

Our November book, Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Potzsch, (last name pronounced "perch"), is not from the Hangman's Daughter series; one of my favorite series. I have not started reading it yet but I know it is supposed to be of the Dan Brown type of historical fiction/mystery.  Potzsch apparently focuses on the mysterious death of an eccentric King of Bavaria, a man widely considered to have been insane. I am eager to get started on this book.

By the way, there is a castle used by Disney which is modeled after one of King Ludwig's castles.

Here is another book I intend to read and suggest for the book club for 2015, have you read it? It's the All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr set in Germany and France before and during World War 11. Please give me feedback if you have read it.

Dissecting a Marriage, Missing Wife, Clueless Husband = Gone Girl

Listen to Gillian Flynn writer of Gone Girl. The book was awesome.  I read until 4:00am this morning.  Dysfunctional families make great stories. This novel had some unexpected twists and turns and some will either love or hate the ending.   Language unnecessarily crude sometimes but this book is definitely  movie material. So what do you know, I searched the internet and discovered the movie will be released October this year starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the main characters and Tyler Perry as the lawyer, Tanner Bolt.

Gone Girl: A Wedding Anniversary,a Missing Wife and a Bitter Husband

I am reading Gone Girl a novel  by Gillian Flynn.  This is the Book Club's pick for June. The setting is Missouri.  It is the day of Amy's and Nick's fifth wedding anniversary and Amy is missing. The story is told from Nick's point of view as  the search for Amy progresses and also from Amy's point of view, before she goes missing. We get Amy's point of view in a diary format.  Frankly the husband is very suspicious.  He is an unhappy man,from a dysfunctional family, who tells these little half truths to the police. Amy is a strange woman with too-perfect New York parents who are writers of a story in which the protagonist is also named Amy. She has these treasure hunts for her husband on every anniversary.  He never is able to figure out all the clues yet she keeps writing them anyway.

I am loving the story so far because there is a lot to keep my attention. Why does Nick have a disposable phone? Why did Amy buy a gun? Where will these fifth anniversary clues ultimately lead Nick?  The clues are little love notes that suggest that she was happy with Nick so who was Amy afraid of really?  I am on page 139 and I am enjoying this.

Fancy Pants Jonah

Jonah, son of Bishop Eli Miller, was a rebellious Ohio Amish child who loved to wear "fancy pants".  When he had a chance to do his Rumschpringe or Rumshpringa (from the verb rumspringen meaning "to jump around"), he never wanted to return to his community. He was banned by his father, the Bishop, and shunned by the community.  I have just finished reading Blood of the Prodigal, an Amish Country Mystery. 

This is actually our book club pick for October.  It is a murder mystery that starts off with the thoughts and feelings of Jonah's ten year old son Jeremiah who is being raised by his grandparents. Jonah takes his son and leaves a note for Bishop.  The Bishop-grandfather seeks help from a local pastor and also from a college professor to locate the grandson. He does not want the help of the police. I loved the unexpected twists to this very short story, 230 pages.

I found the Amish life portrayed in this book very interesting. For readers who do not know, "Rumshpringe" is  a period for Amish adolescents to experience the world of the non-Amish, called the "English",with the hope that they will eventually return to the community to take Amish vows of commitment through baptism. I certainly did not know that any form of adolescent rebellion or exploration of freedom in the non Amish world was acceptable as part of Amish culture. 

I will seek out the next book in the series, Broken English. There is a sneak peek of the first chapter at the back of this book and it opens with violence from a criminal just released from prison.

Frere Mathieu Entre Les Loups/Brother Matthew Among the Wolves

The monastery lit up with rainbows, prisms and cheerful natural light is the scene of an ugly dark crime.  I am fascinated by the contrasts and the ironies in this story Beautiful Mystery set at an isolated monastery in Quebec called Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups translated as St. Gilbert Among the Wolves.  However it was Frere Mathieu who was among the wolves because he is dead and it appears that his murderer is one of his brother monks who sing Greorian chants in his choir.  The Gregorian chants are likened to the voice of God yet one singer of the Divine is a murderer. These monks have taken a vow of silence yet they are famous in the outside world for their singing voice.   Twenty four voices used to sing in harmony and the death of one has left the community of  twenty three unbalanced and the divisions among them are about to be revealed to Inspector Gamache and his assistant Beauvoir.  The two must investigate what started the rifts.

I believe I see evidence of foreshadowing when Inspector Gamache suggests that if the killer flees the monastery he would have to leave through the door guarded by Frere Luc who holds the key.  Could Luc be in danger of being hurt or killed?  Communication with the outside world is limited and I suspect that bit of information may be important later in the story.  Gamache and Beauvoir are able to communicate with the love of their lives by Blackberry adding realism to the story.

The story reminded me of Dissolution when Matthew Shardlake and his assistant had to live at a monastery until they could find a murderer.  In that story the monks pointed fingers at outsiders but in this story the monks know that one among them is a killer.  I am on page 105 and I am enjoying the story.  This book has won the Agatha Award for Best Mystery in the USA and has been nominated for the Anthony Awards  scheduled for September.

Murder in the Monastery

There is a wolf in the fold dressed in a black robe with shaved head and he whispers prayers with his brothers. At last I am reading The Beautiful Mystery by Canadian mystery writer, Louise Penny.  I have been looking forward to this book featuring Inspector Gamache for a long time. The setting is not Three Pines as  in most of the other books in the series.  This time it is a monastery called Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups located in Canada.  This is a remote cloistered monastery with twenty-four monks so one of them must be the "wolf".  The choir director in the story, Frere Mathieu, has been found murdered with a rock in the abbot's garden. His body was found curled up into a fetal position with the Latin words meaning "Day of wrath" written in vellum, possibly from a page of an ancient chant, and placed in the sleeve of his robe.  I was curious if this was a real monastery but it is not.  However, it is based on a real monastery famous for singing gregorian chants. I am on page 50 and so far there is Inspector Gamache, Jean Guy Beauvoir and a new character,Captain Charbonneau, investigating the murder.

Beggar King - Historical Fiction

I am on page 362 of The Beggar King, The Hangman's Daughter series by Oliver Potzsch, almost at the end, and I am still not sure I understand who the bad guys are in this story.  The setting is the 17th century Bavarian town of Regensberg. There is conspiracy after conspiracy, treachery after treachery in this story.  All the minor characters seem not to be who they say they are.  So far, they all seem very shady: the Beggar King, the Venice Ambassador; The Raftmaster; the patricians of the city; the dead bath house owners, Kuisl's sister and brother-in-law; and even Kuisl's wife seems to have some secret past. 

Hangman Jakob Kuisl has been targeted, tricked into leaving Schongau for Regensberg so that he could be accused of  murder in that town.  The leaders in the city seem to have conspired together to accuse him.  Kuisl got a taste of the brutal punishment that he himself has imposed on others in his role as Hangman.  His chief tormentor who wants the punishment to be more and more severe is a voice from his past, which he can not remember fully, and a leader in the city.  The feisty hangman's daughter, Magdalena, and her paramour, Simon, just happened to have run off to Regensberg to start a new life together when they find themselves having to find evidence that Kuisl is innocent.  Then they have to go into hiding after being accused of arson. In the meantime some prostitutes are disappearing and turning up dead. How their deaths connect with Kuisl, I do not know at this point.

I am not as excited about this story as I was with the other two in the series. Too many things are going on in this story.  Who committed the murders and why?  How do the politics and church issues relate to the murders? What is up with this great war in the past?  Who is killing the prostitutes and how does that connect to the main story? What was the mystery powder found at the scene of the murder? So many aspects to this one story.  I was the one who recommended the first book in the series to my book club and we loved it.

Sovereign, Matthew Shardlake series

Happy Thanksgiving all! Find some time to relax and dream, pick up a book. 

I have put Ken Follett's book down and taken up C.J. Sansom's Sovereign.  The setting is the time of the Great Progress in 1541 when King Henry VIII is showing his power to the rough and rebellious northern sections of England where the people are still papists and are considered barbarians.  People in the north ard different, even their dialect is different. The "Great Progress" historically is after a great northern rebellion against the King, called the Yorkshire Uprising or the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536.  This is a time when Lord Thomas Cromwell has been executed for treason and Henry has moved on to wife number 5, Catherine Howard.  

I am only on page 40 and some of the same enemies of our narrator, Matthew Shardlake, introduced to us in Dark Fire are  mentioned in this third book in the mystery series, Sir Richard Rich, Stephen Bealknap, and the Duke of Norfolk.  Bealknap seems to be a fictional character unlike the other two. There is a new character in this novel, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.  He was a friend of Cromwell's and an activist reformer who had renounced the Pope and performed the wedding ceremony of the King to Anne Boleyn. Shardlake finds himself once again having to take on a job he does not like for another Thomas, the said Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer has charged Shardlake, known for his discretion, and his assistant Barak to go to the north of England to ensure that a prisoner and rebel, Broderick, reaches the Tower of London safe and healthy, ironically, so that they can torture him  into revealing certain secrets.  Shardlake, who specializes in property law, is also in the north of England doing arbitration work with a senior lawyer. 

So far there are no dead bodies, no mystery for Shardlake to solve.  I have been captivated by this series since the club selected the first book for the book club discussion this month.

Historical Fiction Fan

I'm all finished with Dark Fire; a very satisfying ending.  I would give this second book in the Matthew Shardlake Mystery series 4 of 5 stars. I got impatient.  I thought the search for the truth about the formula for Dark Fire, also known as Greek Fire, was going on and on.  I was anxious to get to the resolution. I think that Dissolution was the better book though I see some reviewers disagree with me.  The Tudor period has become trendy now so I  have requested the third book from the Inter-library Loan service, Sovereign . This third book is supposed to be as good as or better than the first two books, or so I read on amazon.  I will find out all about  The Great Progress in British history and what new murder mysteries Shardlake and Barak have to solve.   The fourth book in the series is Revelation.   The fifth is Heartstone

While I wait for Sovereign to arrive, I am about to start Ken Follett's 940 page historical fiction,  Winter of the World, Book 2 of The Century Trilogy.  This book starts off in Germany in 1933.  It picks up where it left off in Fall of Giants which I read last July.  I will once again follow five inter-related families in America, Germany, Russia, England, Wales.  It's been a while.  I don't remember the characters.  According to what I wrote last year, the most likeable characters were the Welsh family, Ethel and Billy Williams specifically, and also the Russian Grigori so I look forward to reading this book. I am a fan of historical fiction.

What are you reading on Memorial Day?

Thanks to all you military personnel who risk your life every day.   A shout out to all my family members who have served over the years you know who you are.

I have been reading Defending Jacob.  Is the propensity to violence an inherited trait?  That is the issue in this book and so far I am enjoying it.  Hopefully, I will complete reading and begin the first book of the Hunger Games Trilogy.   

Adults Reading Young Adult Books

Oh no! This columnist, Joel Stein, thinks that adults should read only adult books and forget about the teen books such as Hunger Games and books in the Twilight series.  I just finished reading the fifth and last book in the Boy Sherlock Holmes series by Shane Peacock targeting young adults.   They were all good reads but I prefer the first two in the series.  Sorry Joel but I am not with you. The Hunger Games is on my list of books to read this year.

Murder in Three Pines ... Again

If you have read any of my posts, you'll realized that my title is referring to the Three Pines mystery series by Louise Penny set in a village called Three Pine in Quebec, Canada.  I am reading A Trick of Light, shortlisted for a Dilys Award and named one of the best crime novels of 2011.

The focus of this story is on the artists, Clara and Peter Morrow.  Peter is the one who has achieved some fame and now Clara has got her big break. At the beginning of the story Clara's art is on show at a famous art gallery. She's a nervous wreck at her "vernissage" where her friends and special invited guests are viewing her works.  Peter's jealousy of Clara came up in previous books; it's rearing its ugly head here. Everything is interrupted as the very next morning the dead body of Clara's former childhood friend, Lillian, is found in Clara's garden.   Lillian was an art critic known for her acerbic critiques.  One particularly negative critique written by Lillian stands out in everyone's mind but no one can remember the name of the artist that was her target. My guess is find the target and maybe Chief Inspector Gamache and his team will find the murderer.

Some interesting themes are highlighted in this story.  There are references to light and darkness, fear and greed, jealousy and bitterness, hope and forgiveness.  There is a romance element in the story.  I am only going to reveal that Inspector Beauvoir has separated from his wife and he's in love with a married woman who, so far, has not shown romantic interest in him.

I am on page 113 and I am enjoying the quirky characters. Myrna,the retired psychologist, is coordinating a kind of exorcism of negative energy from Clara's garden using a prayer stick and colored ribbons.  Some type of ritual was also written about in the first book in the series, Still Life, after the death of Clara's closest friend.  I was hoping to see the very odd Agent Yvette Nichol in this story but so far no sign of her.

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Canadian writer Louise Penny does it again.  This book, Bury Your Dead, took me on a wild ride.  There were  three stories going on in the one book. One was a murder mystery set in the village of Three Pines; a continuation from the last book in the series, Brutal Telling. That murder investigation was led by a reluctant Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir and guided by the omnipresent hand or maybe I should say the mind of Gamache.  The other mystery occurred in the past but was haunting Gamache in the present as he tried to solve the murder of an unlikeable Archaeologist in the anglo-operated library of the Literary and Historical Society (Lit and His) in the city of Quebec.  Interwoven in the Quebec murder mystery is the history of Quebec and the animosity between the francophones and the anglophones.  The Battles of the Plains of Abraham and Samuel de Champlain are mentioned throughout the telling of the Quebec portion of the story.

The theme in the story had to do with letting go of grief, loss, and lies.  There were all kinds of loss in the story: loss of friendship, loss of voice, loss of the dead body of a historical figure.  The writing is really good caused me to be on edge.  I was eager to get to the end to see who the murderer was in each of the three stories and the motive for the mayhem. 

The strength of Louise Penny's writings is the quirky characters.   Grumpy Ruth the poet, Clara the artist, and Myrna the black retired Psychologist who owns a book store reappear in the story.  There were equally quirky characters on the Board of the Lit and His; the librarian who thinks she is fluent in French and the man who spoke in a whisper, for examples. The very odd, annoying, but smart agent Yvette Nichol made a brief appearance in this story.  She's been stuck in an office where she has been forced to learn to acquire effective listening skills. I am hoping she will appear in the next Penny mystery, A Trick of the Light.

Read a little of Louise Penny's blog here.

New Detective Novel

I am sharing information today about a debut novel by Jamaican-born Gillian Royes with the weird title of  Goat head of Largo Bay.  Watch  She is envisioning a series of 10 books and it all started in her dreams. Will she be the new Jamaican version of Canadian Louise Penny?

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

I am on page 44 of Bury Your Dead.   The setting is different from the previous books in the Three Pines series but, as usual, there are plots and subplots in the story as I have come to expect in Penny's books. The first few pages had to do with what appears to be some type of raid led by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in which he underestimated the danger involved. The story then fast forwards to Gamache on leave in old Quebec City and staying with his retired mentor.  He is accompanied by his dog and has been doing research at the Literary and Historical Society library. Slowly certain facts are revealed. Gamache was injured in that raid.  Inspector Beauvoir is also at home recuperating. Young officers have been killed.  We don't know what exactly happened in the raid.  How did it go so wrong?

There is a link back to The Brutal Telling and therefore back to the quirky characters from Three Pines.  Gabri has been sending letters daily to Gamache insisting that Oliver, his incarcerated partner, is innocent.  His certainty is based on the dead body being moved.  Why would Oliver move the body of his victim to a place where it could be found when he could have left it in the woods. I am hoping all the loose ends from that murder mystery will have a satisfactory resolution in this book.

Naturally, in the midst of this, a dead body is found in the basement of the library that Gamache has been visiting.  He is asked to get involved even if it were a minor role as interpreter for the French speaking police and the English speaking librarian.   Up to this point in the book he has refused.  We meet new characters in this book, the Board members at the Literary and Historical Society.  They are all aged except for a young pastor.

At least one amazon reviewer has said that this is the best one in the series.  I will let you know if it is.

What are you reading now?

I finished The Brutal Telling. The ending leaves you wanting more.  Too many loose ends;  too many things are unresolved.  I want to know what was the brutal telling that made Emily Carr leave home?  The themes in The Brutal Telling were greed and fear.  The biggest fear according to the author was conscience.    I have moved on to the next book in the Three Pines series by Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead.  Hopefully, I will get some answers here.

What are you reading now?

The Brutal Telling

I am on page 362 of the Brutal Telling.  This story reminds me of a lite version of the Da Vinci Code and The Amber Room by Steve Berry.  There  are codes to be broken and interpreted.  There is art, history,  religion, literature - poetry and allegory intertwined in the story.  For example, the  story incorporates a statue of the artist Emily Carr and her monkey named woo.  Emily left home because of some mysterious incident involving her father.   Also, there is a reference to the Buddhist belief in the Wheel of Life, specifically the "Hungry Ghost".  That's a concept of the state of man where the more he fills his life with food or money or power, the hungrier he is for more.

The murder weapon has been found, a motive for murder has been discerned, and an arrest has been made. Yet, at this point of the story there are unanswered questions, as the author says, a wide trail of "maybes" and "whys". How did the dead man end up with historical treasures that have not been reported stolen; such as a pane from the Amber Room.  Why did Dr Gilbert turn up around the time when a murder takes place?  Coincidence? I can't wait to read more.