A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Posted on by

This was the Hudson Library Literary guild selection for January. This is also a very familiar story. According to Google, there are over a hundred adaptations of the story, ranging from animated, like Mr. Magoo from the 1960s (the very first animated Christmas TV special), to Mickey Mouse to the Muppets to many movies. The premise has even been used for episodes of TV shows like The Odd Couple, Family Ties, or Roseanne.

In the story, the main character is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly, friendless old man who considers Christmas a humbug, despite the good cheer and happiness all around him. He is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who tells him that Scrooge will have three more spirit visitors that night. The three ghosts share visions of Scrooge’s past, the present and the future. In each vision Scrooge is able to see what once was, how much love there is in the world despite poverty and ugliness, and how little he will be missed, (and why that will be) when he is gone.

The theme of possible redemption is classic, and though we know how the story turns out, during the reading of it, a happy ending is not assured.

The book is short, the descriptions are vivid and the theme is one that is well worth pondering.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Posted on by

This book takes place in a time that’s going to sound very familiar to our own. As the story starts, Bird Gardener, age 12, lives with his dad who works at the University library shelving books. They live in a tiny dormitory apartment on campus, and his mom, Margaret Miu, has left the family. Bird’s dad reminds him to tell anyone who asks that they don’t have anything to do with her anymore.

But then Bird, or Noah as he is now known, receives a note, a picture that he knows is from his mother. He starts thinking about his mom and remembering her before she left the family when he was nine. Noah doesn’t have any friends to confide in. His only friend – Sadie – is gone also, having left or been taken from her most recent foster family. Sadie had been determined to find her parents after she had been taken from the family home.

Noah’s dad wants him to avoid trouble at all costs and especially avoid the demonstrations against PACT, which is a government directive to “Preserve American Culture and Tradition.” But the letter Noah had received had stirred something in him and he begins a secret quest to remember his mom and the stories she had told him. His search takes him to libraries searching for her books of poetry, which, like many books, had been removed from the shelves and been destroyed. He becomes aware of the strong anti-Asian sentiment in the world. But he also finds that his mom has become a voice for the voiceless, telling stories of the children who had been taken by government authorities to protect them from “dangerous” influences, the “missing hearts” of the title.

This was an interesting dystopian novel, which is scarily relatable to current day events.

The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on by

In this Maisie Dobbs story, she is commuting from her estate in Kent where her dad, stepmom, adopted daughter, and various other friends are ensconced and (hopefully) safe from frequent London bombings, and London where she’s trying to maintain her detective business and the secret war intelligence duties for which she’s been recruited. And in this story, those roles may be intertwined.

One-night, young Freddie Hackett, employed as a runner delivering messages after school for various British agencies, witnesses a brutal murder. By the time he can report what he saw to Scotland Yard, the body has disappeared, so the Yard is not inclined to believe him, even after a body matching Freddy’s description is pulled from the Thames. Ultimately, Freddy finds his way to Maisie, who promises to look into the matter. While on a trip to Scotland, on her secret war department duties, Maisie is startled to see a man who matches Freddy’s description of the assailant.

Both of her colleagues, Inspector Caldwell at Scotland Yard and Robbie McFarlane at the Special Operations Executive (an agency involved in training and inserting people into France to help with resistance efforts against the Germans), urge her to drop her investigation. But of course, she can’t or won’t. It aggravates Maisie that officials are so willing to discount and ignore Freddie’s story merely because he is a child, and absent proof that he was mistaken, sees no reason not to pursue her inquiries into the apparent murder.

This is an interesting and complicated story taking place in wartime where the answers are not always as clear cut as we might like them to be. Maisie’s personal life is getting complicated as well, and she must also deal with her feelings of guilt due to the death of a close family friend. And, the stories provide insight into life in England during World War II while dealing with rationing, normal problems like child rearing, and the daily fear of bombing.

The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

Posted on by

This author of historical fiction adheres to her usual pattern of following characters in different time periods to expose readers to a bit of history and a modern place of interest.

In this story, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City is paired with the story of an ancient Egyptian Queen, Hathorkare, loosely based on a real female pharaoh named Hatshepsut. Charlotte Cross is the unifying character in time and place, first while working as an archaeologist in 1936 on a dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and then later in 1978 New York City, as she is working at the Metropolitan as an associate curator of the museum’s collections of Egyptian art. The reader also meets Annie Jenkins who is hired by Diana Vreeland, organizer of the Metropolitan Gala. The Met Gala is a major fundraising event for the museum, and it’s known as the party of the year.

But on the night of the gala, a priceless Egyptian artifact is stolen. That same night Charlotte’s research that would prove that Hathorkare was a powerful pharaoh, more powerful than had been previously realized. While pursuing the thief through the museum’s basement storage area, he knocks Charlotte down. Annie sees the assault, but the two women are unsuccessful in finding the thief. Charlotte embarks on a trip to Egypt to try and redo some of her research and follow a lead about an outlaw group specializing in stealing Egyptian artifacts and returning them to Egypt, and Annie, having been let go from the Met, invites herself along. Together the women embark on a quest to find the artifact and a part of Charlotte’s past she’s been unable to forget for years.

This is an interesting story. I love the focus on female characters finding their strength and Independence in this author’s stories. Like this one, they are easy to read and inspire (in me anyway) the curiosity to do a little more digging into the topic.

The Rent Collector by Camron Steve Wright

Posted on by

This story was inspired by real people living in the Stung Meanchey garbage dump in Cambodia. The home of the primary character, Sangly, her husband, Ki Lim, and their son, Nisay, is a one-room shack. The door to the outside is a curtain. And they spend their lives picking through the dump for things that can be salvaged and sold so the family can eat and try their best to put a little aside for the medical care needed by their son. Their lives are dirty, from the environment in which they live, dangerous, due to fires at the dump or the risk of being run over by a bulldozer in the dump or from gangs stealing their meager findings, and Sangly is constantly worried about her son’s chronic diarrhea and failure to thrive.

Though neither of them can read, when Ki Lim brings home a picture book he found while picking through trash, it awakens a desire in Sangly to learn to read. She enlists the aid of the rent collector, Sopeap Sin, who reluctantly agrees to teach her. The story follows Sangly on her quest to learn to read, and to get her son to a traditional healer back in the province she’d come from. The story also reveals many more difficulties of Sangly’s life and hidden depths in Sopeap Sin, whom many had despised for her bad temper and chronic drinking. Sangly also learned the value of friendship, and how to find beauty and hope in her surroundings, no matter how bleak.

I listened to this book and while it certainly had moments of sadness, overall, I would have to say it was an inspiring and hopeful story.

The Rent Collector by Camron Steve Wright

The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt

Posted on by

Bob Comet is a lonely retired librarian in Portland, Oregon. One day, on his daily walk, he encounters a confused elderly woman whom he safely returns to the senior center she had left without being noticed. This act leads Bob to begin volunteering at the center.

As he begins work at the senior center, Bob develops friendships with some of the residents. These relationships cause him to reflect on his own life. He’s lived in the same house all his life, had a fulfilling career at the local library, and books and reading are still major parts of his life. But these reminisces also include glimpses into his awkward childhood, his adventures as a runaway as a child, a unique friendship, and his marriage.

This is a quiet book about a quiet, unremarkable life that still had moments of drama and surprise. It was very enjoyable to read.

Think Twice by Harlan Coben

Posted on by

This is a complicated and twisty mystery involving two of this author’s most interesting characters, Myron Bolitar and Win Lockwood III. As the story starts, the reader is in the mind of a killer taking aim on their victim. And then the next scene is when FBI agents are asking Bolitar where his friend, well-known basketball coach Greg Downing, is. Bolitar is dumbfounded at the question because he’d given the eulogy at Downing’s funeral several years previously.

But even as he denies any knowledge of Downing’s whereabouts, other than the cemetery, Bolitar’s mind is grappling with the question of how Downing’s DNA could have been found at a recent murder scene. And Downing and Bolitar have a complicated history. Bolitar’s pro basketball career had been derailed by Downing, Bolitar had dated the same woman Downing later married, and Bolitar was actually the biological father of Downing’s son Jeremy.

While Myron’s own investigation is barely ahead of that of the FBI, he is finally able to track down Greg who’d gone off the grid and then faked his death. But the investigation also puts Bolitar in the crosshairs of a meticulous serial killer and it is unclear whether or not he’ll survive.

This was a thrilling story, very difficult to put down, and I was surprised when the killer was finally revealed.

Exit Strategy by Lee Child and Andrew Child

Posted on by

In this recent Jack Reacher story, our hero finds himself in a Baltimore restaurant where he sees a scam taking place. Of course, he steps in to interrupt the deal and probably save the life savings of the elderly couple who were the intended mark.

Job done, he heads out of town making a brief stop to buy a coat for his further journeys. As he reaches into his pocket to pay for the coat, he finds a note with a plea for help. Intrigued, Reacher stays in town longer than he’d originally planned. He finds himself in a complex situation involving rival gangs in town, extortion, smuggling. Reacher also finds himself facing a villain who hopes to make some huge profits from the US Government by trying to orchestrate an international conflict, in which his private “army for hire” would be used instead of actual US military personnel.

As always, the plot is complicated, the women are beautiful, and the story is hard to put down!

Exit Strategy by Lee Child and Andrew Child

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida

Posted on by

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat and We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat are both collections of short stories that all involve cats and a mysterious mental health clinic. The clinic is called the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. It is notoriously difficult to find, having no specific address other than North of this Street, West of that street, etc. Only patients who really need the clinic’s services can find the clinic building, at the end of a very narrow alley, and then climb to the 5th floor, where the door to the clinic itself will usually open but not always.

Other tenants in the building think the clinic suite is empty and might even be haunted. At one point, yeas ago, an illicit cat breeder had occupied the office suite and when this was finally discovered, the owners had already been absent for days. So many of the remaining cats were either dead or dying.

But don’t let me give you the impression that these stories are sad. While there are some that are bittersweet, most are positive stories of healing.

Every patient is prescribed a cat, one with a specific personality, to help with challenges the patients are dealing with in their lives. Some are dealing with the complexities of middle school cliques, and in one a middle-aged man is trying to stay relevant in his work and at his home. In another, a recently widowed grandfather is dealing with his own sense of isolation after the death of his wife and trying to deal with his grandson who barely leaves his room.

The second book continues the stories of patients finding help with their mental health issues via this unusual clinic, and some characters appear in both books. In addition, the doctor and his receptionist have a most unusual relationship.

The stories are easy to read and confirm the mysterious bond between cats and their owners. I would say that dog lovers might enjoy the stories also, but I think we all know that cats and dogs have totally different personalities. These are good stories for any animal lover though.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida