Fleur de Lies: A Passport to Peril Mystery

Fleur de Lies: A Passport to Peril Mystery by Maddy Hunter

Read April 2021

I needed something light to balance out Caste.  This is the 9th book in an old cozy mystery series that I have enjoyed over the years.  I am seeing now that the last 6 volumes are mighty hard to come by.  That is a shame.  They are all clever little mysteries and are all pretty dog-gone funny!  The stories all revolve around travel company owner, Emily, who leads a group of senior citizens (including her very own Grandmother) from their small town in Iowa on trips to various exotic locales.  Trouble is, there is always murder included on these trips!  This one takes place in France on a cruise down the Seine River.  I would actually like to do that!  Reminds me of the Nile cruise I was on - very nice to have a home base (the boat) but be able to visit different towns and sites.  This is a humor packed mystery series that I have thoroughly enjoyed. 

Quote from the book...

She smiled impishly.  "Do you know why the French have become such great connoisseurs of wine?"  "Superb vineyards?"  "American tourists!"

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

Read April 2021 - Well Read Book Club

What a powerful book.  So hard to read (for the content) but so important to read.  This book connected so many dots for me under the thesis of caste.  The US having a caste system sine our very beginning makes sense.  Whiteness is the thing that must be preserved at all costs (in this thesis) including if it goes against personal interests (economic, health, etc).  There have been three caste systems in world history - India (ongoing), US (ongoing) and Nazism (12 years).  Horrifying.  As mentioned in the book, this statement got me... Africans say they don't 'become black' until they come to the United States.  Everywhere else they are Nigerian, Ghanan, etc.  But 'black' in the US is the bottom rung no matter what else exists.  Also, Europeans become 'white' in the US - so can be a way to 'rise up'.  Wow.  So much.  Such an important book.  I also note that it is so important to read this book all the way to the very end.  There is so much horror in the book but at the end the author helps us by providing us with tangible ways of moving forward... things we can actually do.  To read the book and not get to that part would leave you with a weight far too heavy.  

The Prodigal Summer

The Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Read April 2021 - Zoom Reading Circle

Okay, so who knew this book would be like ecology porn??  How very strange!  I'll admit I was a bit startled by how much sex was in this book - I did not expect that!  I suppose it was partly making a point about how all species are basically the same - procreate, eat, survive, die.  I kept at this book even though in other circumstances I probably would have stopped.  I also disliked most of the characters.  However, by about ⅔ through I was more into the stories and interested in outcomes.  By the end of the book I even sort of enjoyed the story and liked the characters a bit more.  But I still had several 'ewwww' moments (like Lusa and her nephew???).  Overall it was an interesting book - and it has left an impression on me about living things - cycles, interconnectedness, predators, etc.  It was just kind of a strange book.  

Quote from the book...

Everything alive is connected to every other thing by fine, invisible threads.  Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story. 

A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

Read April 2021 - Zoom Reading Circle

This book had true 'laugh out loud' parts.  It was hard to read when I was holding a sleeping baby!  :D  I truly enjoyed this book although I have a sneaking suspicion I might get annoyed with the author in real life.  Some of the people he mocks really remind me of myself!!  :)  I enjoyed the relationship between him and Katz and was fascinated by both their adventures and experiences alone the trail and the historic and scientific background information.  I would be interested in a follow up on more recent times about the trail, forest service, national parks and etc.  So in some ways it did feel dated (written in 1998).  One interesting note - since I read this book the same month as The Prodigal Summer, all the talk about the chestnut trees and the horrible blight that killed them definitely connected those two reads.  I really wish I could have seen those magnificent trees.  And this book adds to the grave concern about climate change, extinction of species, and mismanagement of lands and nature.  

Quote from the book...

In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature and either/or proposition - either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail.  Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit - that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware river might actually set off the grandeur around it, or that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilled fields. 

Reader's Digest interviews Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods - official movie trailer

A Walk in the Woods - Hike with the cast featurette

The Book of Lost and Found

The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley

Read April 2021

I really did enjoy this story.  It is different from other books by Lucy Foley in that it is more historical fiction than hard core mystery.  Following the deaths of her mother and grandmother, Kate discovers a portrait that greatly resembles her mother and she sets out to discover all she can about the woman in the portrait.  The story is told from through different characters voices across decades from the 1920's to current days.  Much of the story takes place in Corsica and the author truly brings that locale to life with vivid imagery.  The last part of the book, I will admit, felt a bit like a whole other book that tacked on and then sprinted through.  But overall the book was quite engaging. 

Quote from the book...

"That view, out there, it's the same as it has been for centuries, perhaps even millennia, give or take a couple of the boats.  When you are confronted with the permanence of other things in that way way..." he paused.  "Well, it heightens the sense of ones own short span here."

(Reminds me of how I feel in Wyoming.)