For the past few years I've introduced the Read Your Shelves Challenge as a way to motivate me, and anyone else interested, to actually read the books they have sitting on the shelves in their houses. It has worked out well for me, I get to have the satisfaction of successfully completing a challenge, reading books I already have, whittling down my TBR pile, and as a bonus I donate the books to charity when I am done with them. I get to expand my brain, make use of what I have, I declutter, don't break the bank spending at Barnes and Noble, and pass things along to someone else when I am done. It's a win-win. I also like this challenge because I get stressed from having a lot of restrictions that many book challenges have and there is wiggle room built into this one so I can read as I whim and don't feel like I am locked into a book straight jacket doing a challenge.
I've finished the 12 books picked out from my shelves this year and have now continued on with additional books from my shelves, and added a few library and newly purchased books into the mix. I am plugging along at a good clip. Of course, there's been both duds and standouts among the ones that have been read. The long hot days of summer are upon us and I've altered my routine to better fit the weather pattern. I'm walking the dogs first thing in the morning and watering the garden before it gets so hot you sweat buckets. By the time I am wilting from the heat in the afternoon, it's time for a little rest and reading and sometimes a nap to escape the punishing heat. We're having a bad drought here in the Western USA and we've had over one month of 100 degree or greater temps every day so perspiring has become the norm around here. With a good book though, one can escape reality a bit......Here are reviews for the first six books of my 2021 Read Your Shelves Challenge.
Review: The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino (1947) (4 stars)
Calvino is a well-known and respected Italian writer. As a person with Italian heritage, I try to read a variety of Italian history books, memoirs, and classic novels in the genre in an attempt to understand Italy and the Italian Diaspora.
This slim volume covers a period after 1924, during WW II and was written in 1947, it gives a snapshot into the life of a 10 yr. old orphan boy who lives with his older sister who acts as a prostitute for German soldiers. The boy is apprenticed to a cobbler but does not do much work. He spends his days wandering the town, gossiping to the men in the bar, and one of the men dares him to steal the gun from a German soldier visiting his sister. The boy eventually winds up joining a band of men who are partisan fighters opposing the fascists in Italy. (Calvino himself was a resistance fighter for a period of time.)
It’s pretty grim, but it is valuable for the insight into a specific time period. It’s not meant to be a novel to read for enjoyment, it is a commentary for the time, and it sends the message well. I didn’t particularly like it or not like it, but I gained insight from it. Calvino is a master at this type of “human condition” writing.
Review: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (1951) (4 stars)
On the back of this book, it touts the author as “one of the greatest mystery writers of all time”…well maybe in the 1950’s. Some books age better than others and this one would probably be classified as slow and boring now a days. That being said, it is an interesting prospect that is being brought to light here in this book that merits further study for the history buff (and for justice’s sake).
The author wrote a series of mysteries featuring the character, Alan Grant, a Scotland Yard investigator and this is one of those stories. Grant is recuperating from a leg injury and his friends bring him books to read to save him from being bored while he is recuperating. One of his friends brings him a stack of pictures of historical persons to contemplate because, as an investigator, he studies faces to help him solve crimes and he finds the picture of monarch Richard III especially interesting because it looks like a kind face, not like the face of a man who enabled the murder his two young nephews in the Tower of London, so he could usurp the throne of England. History has not been kind to Richard’s reputation, the book explores the possibility that Richard was not involved in the disappearance of the young nephews.
One draw back to reading this book is that if you are not very familiar with the history of England, especially during the time period of Richard III you can get lost in all the history related conversation going on in the book. Also, the book is very English in its style of writing; that may annoy some readers or delight others. Though the book is at sometimes bogged down with history it does present an interesting conundrum that deserves to be studied in more detail by historians today. Richard did not have much, if anything, to gain from doing or ordering the dastardly deed, but Henry VII and his fellow supporters sure did, and they became the victors who wrote the history that came afterwards.
Peace Talks
by Jim Butcher (4 stars)
I will tell you up front I am a big Harry Dresden fan and have read them all, more than once, except the last one (Battle Ground). I crave reading another Dresden adventure, and I have felt it was time well spent reading just about anything Butcher writes. I enjoyed Peace Talks, all of us Dresden lovers were ecstatic to have another book featuring our favorite Chicago wizard. Except… for the small fact that I felt cheated out of an actual story ending! As a fan it felt like dirty dealing to have the book end where it did and make you wait for the next one, which the publisher knows you will surely buy since you waited so long for Peace Talks to come out. It does not feel good to know you, as a fan are being used in this way. I suspect, along with many other readers that Peace Talks and Battle Ground were supposed to be one novel that was separated into two, as a marketing gimmick. Bad call publisher, and on you Jim, for abusing loyal fans this way! Reviews of Battle Ground all seem to agree it is just the rest of the story that should have been told in Peace Talks, but with a lot of filler.
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (3 stars)
This was the second book I have read by this author, good thing it was not the first or else I never would have read another by her. This was a long, overly descriptive, and repetitive slog of depressing events. I almost couldn’t get through it and wanted to start skimming pages just to get to the end. Over 500 pages of the author trying to be clever with flowery descriptions that detracted from the story instead of adding to it, just inflating the word count, and annoying the reader. Not much story here unless you like dysfunctional old maid sisters who are weaklings and ruin life for each other. I could not bear one more description of a character lighting up another cigarette, they did it over and over, and over again, just a whole lot of smoking going on, not much else. They should have all died of lung cancer or the fire would have been more believable if one of the sisters left a burning cigarette butt fall on the carpet. Disappointed.
Flu by Gina Kolata (3 stars)
Not quite what I was expecting. Although the book does contain some interesting information about the search for the virus that caused the 1918 flu epidemic, it falls rather short on answering any burning questions about it. The book contains a lot of ancillary information, like listings of education degrees, names of scientists who attended conferences and strong unflattering opinions about an expedition to Norway to retrieve the virus (so it can possibly be studied), from burials of flu victims in arctic permafrost. It seems like the author was just trying to inflate word count without much of a real science mystery. A mediocre attempt. Blah.
Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson (1/2 star)
Awful, awful, awful!!! Very repetitive, nothing really happens, the main character is nutty and disorganized, and you will feel that way when you read this book. Nothing redeemable about it. It’s surprising how terrible books like this actually get published.
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