The Girl from Raven Island is an enjoyable police procedural. Detective Robert Lui of the Vancouver British Columbia police is assigned to a search for an officer who has gone missing. The officer is found killed in a grotesque manner, and the search for the murderer is on. While most of the action occurs in Vancouver, Lui also flies to an island off the BC coast to gather information about suspects. Along with the usual suspect tracking, additional violence, and police business, there is significant space related to Robert’s family, romances, office politics, and favorite coffee shops. Some may think this causes the story to move too slowly, although I found these interludes a good break from the world of crime,

Five separate stories – one for each of the Great Lakes. They range from touching and recognizable as something that could happen today, to set in the relatively near future and unusual but possible, to dark and disturbing. The stories focus on people living near the edges of each lake rather than on the lakes themselves. For example, the characters in “Confessions of an Efficient Cause” (Lake Michigan), traveled from Chicago to Kenosha WI to Kalamazoo MI. “A Hummingbird in Winter” (Lake Ontario), takes place in Toronto. Each of the stories engaged me. Good, short reads.

This audiobook read by the author is wonderful! McConaughey writes well and deeply about his own history and his thoughts. Also - he is a gifted performer, and listening to him is so engaging that it is hard to stop. I'm sure the physical book is good - but the audiobook is terrific.

The historical setting of Pushing Back the Desert is intriguing – the Iran oil industry and the battle over control of that country and its wealth. The action begins in 1953 when the Sentinel team is very concerned about a potential takeover of the Iranian oil industry by British and American interests and how to prevent that from happening. The back stories describe the Iranian people who built the industry and supported the development of the desert into land suitable for farming. A significant part of that effort was providing the citizen-farmers with the environment that would enable them to become self-sufficient, including education and healthcare. The personal stories begin in the early 1900s with Harshim Naraghi and his wife, Kate and follow up with their son Sam and his wife Sally during the1930s.The women are described as strong and intelligent.

One of the strategies that Harshim and Kate used to bring water to the desert was the quants (or qanats), a system for transporting water from an aquifer or water well to the surface through an underground aqueduct that was developed over 3000 years ago in Iran.

I am now interested in reading source documents related to the political environment at that time.

The question of how the Old Testament tales of a raging and punishing God connect with the New Testament accounts of a kind and loving Jesus is challenging. Lynch begins with a list of eight options for approaching the violent texts. He looks carefully at the interpretations of the earliest stories of violence in the books of Moses, the Great Flood, and the invasion and colonization of Canaan. Helpful information includes the assessments of other scholars, archeological and anthropological evidence, ancient writing styles, and some straightforward physics and biology related to the flood. He ends with approaches for individuals to come to address an unsolvable problem. I found myself considering the violence from a different perspective than I used to have. Some of the connections Lynch made didn’t work for me, and his excursion into the talks of giants was not useful. All in all, a helpful book with information and viewpoints that I had not previously considered.

The story takes place in the mid-1940s and focuses fairly equally on six bright, very wealthy former classmates at Berkely who are now in their mid-thirties. They are trying to prevent German wealthy industrialists from using their money to seize and maintain power. While there are a couple of exciting vignettes, it seemed as if there isn't enough time spent with any one of the six to get to know them sufficiently to care about them. I also found the portrayal of time confusing. Months went by where characters seemed to disappear - nothing happened even though one of them had been left in very difficult circumstances.

I chose to read this book because my daughter, in her 40s, was diagnosed with MS about 2 years ago. The poems describe this disease movingly and pull no punches. The author’s pain feels real. I was struck by the matter-of-fact descriptions of the challenges faced in simply moving around – in and out of buildings, in his apartment, traveling, at the library. Not ‘poor me’, but simply ‘this is the way it is’. The first poem, ‘THE ABCS OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS’ shocked me with its onslaught of words that come along with MS. This is not a gentle or soft description of the reality of the disease. For me, this was a disturbing read, but necessary in order to have a better picture of the world my child may face. I recommend this book with the warning that discomfort comes with reading it.

This is an important topic - well researched and written with a balanced perspective, and valuable for non-Muslims to consider. It is far too easy for those of us who are not Muslim to assume that the little we know represents all Muslims, and that we 'understand' people who are 'other'.

I was intrigued by the title and primary subject of the book, a disease killing young children in Brazil and the researcher trying to determine the source of the disease. In a manner like real life, there seemed to be several different potential side stories but none of these got enough pages to be really satisfying. The writing is good, but I would have liked this book to go into more depth about almost all the topics – or maybe to have narrowed down to a couple of real focal points.

This short book, received through LibraryThing's Early Readers program, presents four statements about an individual’s own self-understanding and beliefs. They aren’t new ideas, but I found it worthwhile to reflect on them. The concepts are: “You are Safe”, “You are Worthy”, “You are Lovable”, and “You are Connected”. The author describes the characteristics of believing that those statements are true, and scenarios that show what can happen when a person, either the reader or one of the author’s clients, does not embrace those statements. In addition to the descriptive material, at the end of each chapter for one of the statements she provides “Clues” to help the reader determine if they believe that they are safe, worthy, lovable, or connected. She also asks reflection questions for each of the statements.

I found the book to be encouraging and a useful resource for thinking about myself. However, it does not provide help in actually implementing a change. It left me wondering “what next?”

Sappy love talk

In every chapter of this book, I found a message that caused me to think “oh yeah – I need to remember this”. Pavlovitz writes in a direct, accessible manner. His political position is clear, and he mourns the incivility and lack of understanding and empathy that seem to be endemic in the US today. But he does not simply tell us how bad things are; he tells us how our behavior and our spiritual journey are related, how a “love-less, Jesus-less Christianity will leave us fractured”, and what a loving Christianity would look like. The book is full of pointed examples of how if you believe in Christ, then your actions must reflect that belief – and what that means. Some chapters made me feel uncomfortable about my own behavior – there are other books to read for relaxation. I recommend this book for any Christian who is willing to be jiggled out of their comfort zone.

This an enjoyable trip through medieval France through both the eyes of a traveling spice trader and an amnesiac Lady whose child has died and who is trying to escape the Sorrow emanating from the loss of son. She believes that she can shed the Sorrow by selling her ruby wedding ring along with the nail from the child's coffin. The spice trader buys them and realizes that he must return them in order to be at peace again.

The author describes many aspects of the French society of the time - monasteries, convents, markets, a peasant home, spice trading for a prosperous kitchen, traveling groups of pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, and others. She has obviously done a great deal of research about life in that long ago time. An enjoyable read!

"A House is a Body" by Shruti Swamy is a collection of beautiful short stories. The stories are located in India or California, usually from the perspective of a woman from India. The care with which the author describes small details creates a rich fabric that pulls me in and draws me back to another reading. Each word seems chosen because it adds to the whole story, and the whole is emotionally moving. I will search for more of Swamy’s writing.

I struggled with this book – the primary character’s musings about her emotions seemed confusing and overlong, and the references to her previous lives disconnected to her present-day world. The plot revolving around Aiyanna’s parents’ dysfunctional relationship and how it intersected with their daughter was interesting, but it didn’t appear related to the rest of the story. Reincarnation is an intriguing concept, but the vignettes didn’t add much to the whole.

"A Hundred Million Years and a Day" is a beautifully written and translated book. Stan tells the story of being 6 years old in 1908 and discovering his first fossil and beginning his passion for paleontology. In his fifties, after a career as a professor in Paris, he hears a rumor of a ‘dragon’ skeleton found by an old man years ago in a cave high in the Dolomites. This could be a dinosaur skeleton, and the find of Stan’s professional and personal life if true. Stan organizes a hunting expedition to look for the skeleton with three other men – Umberto, the paleontologist Stan mentored during his university years, Gio, an Italian mountaineering guide, and Peter, Umberto’s young assistant. The other character is the glacier – hard, unforgiving, and impersonal. While telling of their search for the dinosaur’s cave, Stan also writes about his difficult youth in a small town in the Pyrenees with an abusive father and a loving and charming mother.

The author slowly pulls us into the relationships among the four men, along with wonderful descriptions of the fascinating power of the glacier. “With his foot, he [Gio] tests the snow spread out before us, soft and white as a quilt, and it collapses with a sigh. Below, the glacier opens its greedy mouth, shading from azure to aquamarine, and it’s so beautiful that I almost want to throw myself in anyway.” I found this book an extremely satisfying read, and am looking for more of Andrea’s work.

Maggie Hope has led an adventurous and exciting life and now she is ready to be away from work with the police, the intelligence community, and the government and focus on less thrilling activities. For example, disarming UXBs (unexploded bombs) in 1943 London and speeding through the city on a motorbike. However, she is drawn into the search for a serial killer who appears to be connected with a previous case. While the plot moves to an exciting conclusion, I was more interested in Maggie herself and her relationships with friends, current and former colleagues, a romantic interest, and the victims of the killer. This is the ninth book in MacNeal’s series about Maggie, so there are a lot of backstory clues that a new reader has to pick up in order to get a good picture of Maggie. The character intrigued me enough that I intend to read previous books in the series and expect to enjoy them as much as I did this one.

Note: I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.

I received this book as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program.

The seven short stories in this book delve deeply into the inner thoughts of the main character in each story. The thoughts are often disturbing - despair, a mother's death and a child's innocence, revenge for the taking of innocence, revenge for the violence visited upon women and taking control of the future.

The writing is beautiful and magical - heartbreak, pain, depths of sorrow - along with birds that will never fly in this world, deathly cold water, and lost love. Only 124 pages, but not a quick read. The stories have followed me and reappeared in unexpectedly in my thoughts.

I received this book as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program.

Anna has been running away for 13 years. Now her son, Joshua, is tired of moving to a new location whenever his mom feels threatened. He is also tired of not knowing the truth about the secrets his mother has protected him from since he was born. The plot revolves around Anna's work analyzing handwriting, a kidnapping she is helping police with, and her struggles with her son. The characters are interesting and fleshed out nicely. The first part of the book takes place in Indiana, and the last third is in northern Wisconsin. I've spent a lot of time in that part of Wisconsin and appreciate the accurate descriptions that capture the lakes, forests, and resort towns of that area. A good thriller; the plot twists made me unable to put the book down until I found out what was next. Highly recommended!

knitting, non-fiction, multiple authors, moving, stash, yarn, fiber

I received this book as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program.

Pretense by John Di Frances is an exciting read with plot twists that surprise and a cliffhanger ending that left me wanting the next in the 3-part Imbroglio Trilogy to appear quickly. The story is told from two perspectives – that of the criminals who smoothly carry out deadly attacks against high-profile political leaders in eastern Europe, and the investigative team including Polish police, Interpol agents, and an American CIA agent. The clues left behind point to multiple possibilities, and the team is led down dangerous paths all over Europe by the mastermind behind the criminals.

The author helpfully identifies the various weapons and agencies by their full names and the acronyms that he uses after the initial references. The locations are well-described and seem realistic. I found the dialog a bit stiff at times, but that doesn’t really distract from the fast-moving storyline. I would have liked to know more about the internal and personal lives of the investigators, and what drives them to go after the bad guys.

All in all, a good, quick read.

21st century, Moscow, Helsinki, Athens, Washington DC, CIA, FBI, counter-espionage