The Bird Hotel by Joyce Maynard

This is one of my favorite authors, but this was not my favorite book of hers.  I did enjoy it, but it was a little too long for me, without a lot happening in the middle section.  I did like the conclusion, but it probably was a little predictable.

I feel like she added too many characters, all of them interesting, but not all of them really contributing that much to the story. I had to have a paper next to me where I wrote down their names and a little bit about them.  The characters would pop up again later and I was not sure who was who.

But I am glad that I read it. 

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

This is a book read in one of my book clubs.  I did enjoy it and learned a lot from it.  However, it was not a book that was particularly "discussable."  One of my friends in the club said that it is considered Historical Anthropology, which is interesting, but I am not sure a real categorization in literature.  But that is not important.

Here is a good synopsis of the theme:  Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little-known region of China and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

There is lots to learn about tea, too!  The story is somewhat predictable however, which bothered me at the end.  But I am not sorry that I read it.  I just didn't feel like there was much to discuss.  In a book club book, I like to have conversations about the book, more than this lent itself to.

It.Goes.So.Fast by Mary Louise Kelly

I have been listening to this NPR reporter for years and she's always been one of my favorites.  Currently, she is one of the hosts of All Things Considered.  I heard that she had written this book, and I heard her interviewed about it, and I knew I had to read it.  I am so glad that I did.  One of the best books so far this year.

By the way, I listened to the book, in her own voice, which made it even better. I do recommend using that format.

In this memoir, Ms. Kelly describes how she has been juggling her life for the past 17 years as a mother and a professional with an extremely demanding but amazing job.  She realizes during her older son's senior year of high school that she has missed the majority of his soccer games, and soccer is his LIFE!

There are very interesting stories from "the front" covering the news,  accounts of her life as a mom and wife and yes, daughter.  I could not stop listening to this audiobook.  Get it and listen. 

Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine

 

I loved this book! I have read many of Schine's other books, most recently the Grammarians and this new one did not disappoint!

Here is what the New Yorker says, 

Julian, a directionless young New Yorker, ventures west, to Venice Beach, to help care for his zesty ninety-three-year-old grandmother. When the pandemic descends, he finds himself sequestered indefinitely with her, as she recounts memories of her Anschluss-ruptured Vienna childhood and her family’s subsequent immigration to Hollywood, where she came to know legends including Arthur Schoenberg and Greta Garbo. The novel emphasizes echoes across history but explores intergenerational gaps, too, and—despite handling such weighty subject matter as survivor’s guilt, sexual repression, and the ongoing traumas of racial and religious persecution—maintains a remarkable lightness of tone and of characterization.

I was so pleased that I was reading this on my iPad because I was constantly looking things up and I learned so much about German intellectuals living in LA in that time period.  I was not aware that so many moved there to escape Nazism in Vienna (and other locales.) This was particularly relevant for me, having just seen the play, Leopoldstadt on Broadway.  

This book was a much more delightful way to acknowledge that time period.  

Highly recommend.  Loved the poignant ending, too.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

I

truly enjoyed this book even though it had some slow spots.  It's a family story that deals with four sisters contending with love and loss,  estrangement and tragedy, and finding ways to deal with each other under these difficult circumstances.

There are two sisters who are twins and the two others who are very closely aligned with each other until one of them marries (the wrong man) and the sisters become estranged for many years.  I won't give any spoilers!

The Kirkus Review is linked, and I agree with it all the way!

So glad I read this book!

I Have Some Questions for You by Rachael Makkai

 

I loved her book, "The Great Believers," and I liked this book, but it didn't match the other in my estimation. It seemed to move along too slowly for me.

The story takes place at a boarding school and goes back and forth in time, from past to present.  The protagonist, Bodie, was a student there many years ago when a murder took place on campus.  The murdered girl was Bodie's roommate, but they were not close.  There was a "resolution" as to who committed the crime, but Bodie questioned it from the start. She goes back to campus to teach a course (she has a successful podcast) on podcasting and one of her students decides to use this murder as the topic of her podcast.

Bodie has ideas as to what happened and who the murderer is, and she speculates throughout the book what could have happened.  The plot moves along somewhat slowly, but we learn a little more with each chapter.

Small World by Laura Zigman

 

How does the death of a child impact a family?  Monumentally, obviously and this book tackles that difficult subject delicately, but with humor and pathos.

It is also about sisters and the issues between them.  I love this quote from the book, and the accompanying narrative from the NYTimes:

Our narrator, Joyce, sums up the aftermath of this loss using the technical term for crooked teeth: “You are born into malocclusion. Into an unlucky family with a disabled child, then a dead child. The hole caused by her absence will eventually cause everything and everyone to shift, and drift, the same way teeth do, after an extraction.” Lenny and Louise never recover; he dies of a drug overdose that may or may not be accidental and she channels her heartbreak into all-consuming activism on behalf of disabled children. Lydia alights for California as soon as she graduates from art school. And Joyce spends as much time as possible at friends’ houses, scrutinizing their framed family photos with the zeal of a detective on the trail of a promising lead.