Life: It Goes On - September 28

Happy Sunday from sunny Omaha! We're looking at a beautiful fall day here, which we'll cap off with an outside concert later tonight. Not that I'm not looking forward to this concert, but it's one of those decisions I made after a couple glasses of wine that I'm now second guessing. I mean, I never do something on a school night that gets me home as late as this will! I am such a slave to my sleep schedule these days that late nights find me really dragging the next day. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Rachel Hawkins' The Woman Upstairs. Up next is Sarah Damoff's The Bright Years.

Watched: Volleyball, football, The Voice and Only Murders In The Building.

Read: Taylor Reid Jenkins' Atmosphere.

Made: A couple of batches of spaghetti sauce with roasted cherry tomatoes from our garden. We are having a bumper crop of those things so we're having to get creative finding ways to use them. There are only so many frozen tomatoes that we'll need over the winter. 

Enjoyed: Happy hour with friends on Friday and family time at the Big Guy's sister's house yesterday, catching up with our niece, who was up from Arizona. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I think we have a quiet week this coming week which should give me plenty of time to work on some projects. I need to get a dresser repainted for Miss H to use temporarily, I have a table I want to get sanded and oiled, and that garage needs to get tackled before it's too cold to work out there. 

Thinking About: I'm seeing all of the home accounts I follow gearing up for Halloween and I'm wondering why that's a holiday that I have less and less interest in decorating for as I get older. I'm not even sure I'll get out my witch collection this year. 

Feeling: I have a couple of Fridays off this month, but we'll be busy on both of them. What I really need is a few days off just to do the things that I want to do - read, thrift, knock off a decluttering project. 

Looking forward to: Seeing Jon Batiste with Andra Day tonight. 

Question of the week: As much as I like live music, I tend to not go to concerts these days for a number of reasons. Are you a fan of live music? What's the best concert you've ever seen? 

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable

Read by Emilia Clarke

10 hours, 55 minutes

Published August 2024 by Simon and Schuster

Publisher's Summary: 

Anna Maria della Pietà was destined to drown in one of Venice's canals. Instead, she became the greatest violinist of the 18th century.

Anna Maria has only known life inside the Pietà, an orphanage for children born of prostitutes. But the girls of the Pietà are lucky in a sense: most babies born of their station were drowned in the city's canals. And despite the strict rules, the girls are given singing and music lessons from an early age. The most promising musicians have the chance to escape the fate of the rest: forced marriage to anyone who will have them.

Anna Maria is determined to be the best violinist there is-and whatever Anna Maria sets out to do, she achieves. After all, the stakes for Anna could not be higher. But it is 1704 and she is a girl. The pursuit of her ambition will test everything she holds dear, especially when it becomes clear that her instructor, Antonio Vivaldi, will teach Anna everything he knows-but not without taking something in return.

From the opulent palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, The Instrumentalist is a “searing portrait of ambition and betrayal” (Elizabeth MacNeal, author of The Doll Factory). It is the story of one woman's irrepressible ambition and rise to the top. It is also the story of the orphans of Venice who overcame destitution and abuse to make music, and whose contributions to some of the most important works of classical music, including “The Four Seasons,” have been overlooked for too long.

My Thoughts: 

I first heard about this book last month when some friends and I attended the Omaha Public Library's annual Book Bash. Historical fiction that focuses on classical music, particularly Vivaldi? Count me in! I requested the audiobook while I was still at the event. 

Let's get the one thing that kept me from liking this book as much as I wanted to out of the way. It was, as is so often the case, a matter of editing. I felt like there was quite a bit of repetition in the book and some things that could easily have been left out with no loss to the story. Oh, and one other thing: since this was an audiobook, I really wish there would have been more actual music involved. 

And now the good. It's not surprising to so often pick up books that teach us about something in history we know nothing about; even the most well educated historians don't know everything. But I'm always excited to read a book showcasing women making the most of their power, even in times and places where they had so little of it. 

Anna Maria della Pietà was a real person, who actually did grow up in the Pieta, study under Vivaldi and have some of his compositions written especially for her, and become a maestra. The Pieta was a real place where orphans were taken in and raised to be useful to society. The girls with musical talent were encouraged and the best of them placed in the figlie di coro. The figlie was widely admired and the members received extravagant gifts as well as brining in funds for the orphanage. 

 Constable takes that history and gives Anna Maria a beginning and a full life, filled with friends, sadness, betrayal, immense talent and even greater ambition. My beloved Vivaldi doesn't come off looking too good, but I was ok with that, given that it meant that Anna Maria could rise up and bring along with other girls with her. As in real life, Anna Maria first shows her talent at the age of eight, so what we see is a young girl desperate to use that talent to make something of herself while being too young to see how she is hurting herself (and others) even as she ascends in the figlie. The ending worked perfectly for me, with happiness for Anna Maria while still recognizing the limitations on her life and the other women. 

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

Read by Julia Whelan, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Shiromi Arserio

7 hours, 57 minutes

Published January 2023 by St. Martin's Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.

Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce's girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album--and ends in Pierce's brutal murder.

As Emily digs into the villa's complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce's murder wasn't just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred--and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.

Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge--and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.

My Thoughts: 

Chess is a highly successful self-help guru. Emily is a less successful cozy mystery series writer going through a bitter divorce and far behind the deadline to submit the latest book in the series. When Chess suggests Emily join her in Italy and they can both spend time writing, Emily agrees. And that's about the last time the two seem to really enjoy each other. 

After they arrive, Emily is just not inspired to return to her Petal Blossom character (and who can blame her - what a ridiculous name - even for a cozy mystery series). Instead, she begins reading Lilith Rising, the only published novel by Mari Godwick which became one of the greatest horror novels of all time, a novel Godwick wrote the summer she spent at Villa Rosato and reading the lyrics of Mari's sister Lara's uber famous novel, Aestas. Soon she's obsessed with uncovered the secrets in those works and in the villa itself. And that's when things become very tense between Chess and Emily. 

Between Chess' and Emily's chapters, the story of what happened in 1974 is revealed through Mari Godwick's eyes. That storyline overshadows the contemporary one, in no small part because the reader is playing a game of "I see what you did there" with Hawkins. Mari Godwick = Mary Godwin Shelley; Pierce Sheldon = Percy Shelley; Noel Gordon = George Gordon, Lord Byron; Mari's step sister Lara = Mary's step sister, Clair. Lilith Rising, created on a stormy night = Frankenstein (although with a twist); Aestas = Tapestry (ok that one doesn't link back to the Romantics, but still). 

What's good here? 

• Playing "I see what you did there," although I'd far preferred that Hawkins let the reader figure out the connections without stating them outright. 
• The twists that I was expecting from Hawkins that which she delivered. 
• The readers are great (but I expected that as soon as I saw Julia Whelan was one of the readers). 

Where it fell short for me?

• The relationship between Chess and Emily, even before the reveal that I can't tell you about. 
• That reveal about Chess and Emily's reaction to it. Not believable to me at all.   
• Although Hawkins' use of multiple narrators in The Heiress was one of my favorite things about that novel, in this book the dual storylines (interspersed with passages from Lilith Rising) didn't work as well for me because it felt uneven. 

Reviews are mixed on this one - some readers and reviewers really love it, others felt it could have been better. I fall in that latter category, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth reading - there was plenty to enjoy. 

Life: It Goes On - June 9

Happy Sunday! As I type, I'm watching out the window for a truck to arrive with my new washing machine. Mine decided it would tumble long enough to fill with water and it was fine with draining and spinning. It was just all of that stuff in the middle that it didn't want to do any more...like actually wash the clothes. I'd much rather be spending this money on a vacation! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Lynn Painter's The Love Wager and started Madeline Martin's The Keeper of Hidden Books. Quite the change in mood from one to the other!

Watched: Lots of college baseball (again), game one of the NBA finals, and Jerry Seinfeld's latest movie, Unfrosted (a little stupid, but also fun with a lot of sly things thrown in and Hugh Grant was hilarious). 

Read: I finished Julia Alvarez's latest, The Cemetery of Untold Stories and started Kris Carr's I'm Not A Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart. 

Made: Ravioli - both a spinach/ricotta and a sweet corn/spinach/ricotta type, chicken nugget salads, and a chicken pasta dish. 

The way you dress for a matinee
when you're following it up with
a trip to an arts festival. 

Enjoyed: Yesterday BG, Mini-him, Miss C and I went to a matinee performance (matinee because I was more concerned about getting seats where I wanted them than to pay attention to the fact that it wasn't an evening performance!) of Moulin Rouge, which we all thought was excellent. We followed that up with a trip to the Omaha Summer Arts Festival where we ate African, Mexican, Southern, and Indian food and came home with some art purchases. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: This week should be quieter so I'm hoping to get caught up on paperwork, do some work in the basement, and get some extra reading time in because I have so many books I need to get read. 

Thinking About: Father's Day and what to get for my dad and my hubby. 

Feeling: Like a different woman. Got my hair done on Thursday and we went lighter than I have been in years (gotta move that way to make the grays not so obvious quite so soon!). 

Looking forward to: Evenings on the patio since we'll finally have evenings that are free this week when it's not raining. 

Question of the week: Have you seen the theatrical production of Moulin Rouge? 

Lucky by Jane Smiley

Lucky by Jane Smiley

384 pages

Published April 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky—and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then—through a combination of hard work and serendipity—she started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and she tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing. Could it be true love? Or is that not actually what Jodie is looking for?

Full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock 'n' roll, Lucky is a story of chance and grit and the glitter of real talent, a colorful portrait of one woman's journey in search of herself.

My Thoughts: 

Read that summary and tell me what you would be expecting in a book. Here's what I was expecting: a book about a young woman who grows up to be a rock 'n' roll star, with all that implies - song writing, recording, touring, concerts, relationships. I expected interactions with the famous names that Smiley throws about. Have you already guessed that that's not what I felt like I got? 

After my first experience with Smiley (in 2015, Some Luck), I was pretty sure that Smiley wasn't for me. But Smiley is a prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. It's clear she's well respected and loved by many and I assumed that one day I would at least read the book that won the Pulitzer, A Thousand Acres. Knowing that I was planning on giving her another chance, I figured this one might as well be it. 

What I Liked:

• Early on, I was drawn in to this one, to the details about Jodie's neighborhood and family and the vivid picture I was getting. I immediately texted a friend who'd moved here from St. Louis about it, certain that she would recognize the places Smiley was referencing. Honestly, if the story had never left St. Louis but focused instead on the family, I think I would have enjoyed this one more. It's truly what the book felt like it was meant to be. 
• The characters of the Jodie's family and the friends she made through her mother. These characters felt really well developed and felt like people I might know. 
• The ending, which was totally unexpected. Although you'll note that the ending also falls on the next list. 

What I Didn't Like:

• When I reviewed Some Luck (and discussed it with my book club), the word minutiae came up. This book seems to make it clear that including the minutiae of life is one of Smiley's hallmarks. This would work for me in a novel that didn't span decades. Smiley includes so much about the food Jodie eats, the walks she takes (sooooo much about the walks!), the men she sleeps with (more as a look how many and less about the relationships). 
• All of the song lyrics. To be honest, I didn't think any of them would ever have been made into a real song; and, for me, they added nothing to the story and took up room that could have been better spent in other ways. 
• The ending. Yeah, I know I said that I liked it. There are kind of two parts of the ending. One I liked (clearly Smiley - or at least Jodie - and I are of a like mind politically). The other I felt was something of a cop out. 

Now the question is - do I give Smiley a third chance? There are things that I really like about Smiley's writing. In some ways, that minutiae provides lovely, intimate details that allow readers to be absorbed into the character's lives. But...I keep expecting more than what I feel like I'm getting. 

Life: It Goes On - April 7

Happy Sunday! Anyone else feel like they're living in limbo with the weather for the past few weeks? We had such a nice jump on spring in March and then we backslide into winter and are only ever so slowly making our way back out of it. The stupid crabapples that stay on the tree in my front yard all winter (and, to be fair, are quite lovely when all else is brown and dead) are still falling off (onto my driveway - exactly the reason I told my husband, when he went to get a tree 25 years ago, NOT to get a crabapple!) so we're a few more weeks from the flowers.THAT'S my sign that spring has really arrived. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait (loving it!) and a lot of music, including Godspell (after watching it on tv on Sunday) which, naturally lead to Jesus Christ Superstar which lead to the Opening Numbers playlist on Spotify which, somehow led to the Avett Brothers. Ok that last one was a result of my Tier One sending me their latest video.

Watched: More college basketball, including the men's 3-Point Contest, which was won by Nebraska's Keisei Tominaga. We just love him here! 

Read: The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins. I could not put it down and stayed up late Friday to finish it. 

Made: More butterscotch sauce and more cheesy hash browns to take to Miss H, who was supposed to have a couple of her wisdom teeth pulled on Wednesday. 

Enjoyed: A two-day trip to KC, ostensibly to care for Miss H after said wisdom teeth were removed. But she didn't find out that the dentist was sick until I got her to her appointment so we had some time to shop, eat out, set up her new turntable (her birthday present from The Big Guy and me), and do a lot of decluttering and organizing. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: A big decision was made on Friday. My dad will be staying at the facility that he was admitted to after his most recent hospitalization and will not be returning to the apartment he had so hoped to spend the rest of his life in. A very tough decision; but, we his children feel, the right one. So the next few weeks will be spent emptying the apartment that he got to spend all of 32 hours in. This is almost of emotionally tough as it was to move him out of his home of 50+ years was a year and a half ago. 

Thinking About: See above. 

Feeling: Also, see above. I do finally feel like, once this move is done, that my dad will be at a place where I will have to care for him far less. He will be safe, well cared for, well fed, and be able to settle in and make new friends.

Looking forward to: My brother is coming up for a few days to help get things packed up and moved. It will be a lot of work but we'll enjoy his company. 

Question of the week: Come May, I am going to get out of town. I don't where to yet, just know that I need a change of scenery for a few days. What do you like to do when you take a long-weekend road trip? 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

400 pages

Published August 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. 

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

My Thoughts: 

Confession: this is another one of those books that I picked up without any notion of what it was about; I picked it up solely based on the author, an author I've been meaning to read for years, an author who's written three books I own but have never read. It's time I thought. And now I can't help but wonder if I might have done those other three books a disfavor. Not so much in ignoring them for so long (although that's certainly a disfavor), but in having set the bar so high for them with this one. 

The New York Times calls this book "a murder mystery locked inside a Great American novel" and a web. 

That murder mystery begins in the opening pages of the book, when that skeleton is found and then the mystery disappears until it is finally explained in the closing pages of the book. There is not much investigation, nor an inquiry in 1972 and readers will be forgiven for forgetting about that skeleton over the course of the book. They'll forget about it because McBride's about to weave that web, bringing in more and more story lines that, at first, seem to be leading nowhere. 

We quickly travel back in time to the 1920's and 1930's, to Chicken Hill, where African Americans and Jewish immigrants live in sometimes uneasy peace with each other and with the "real" Americans who live down the hill in Pottstown. McBride introduces to a wide range of characters in the neighborhood and a complicated water rights issue that will try your brain but stay with it, the payoff is well worth it. Not even the smallest detail is a throwaway in this book; everything points to something more. McBride takes his time building the novel; but it never felt too slow, so wrapped up was I in the people of Chicken Hill, the dynamics of the people who lived there, the music and politics of the time. There is humor here, tension, heartache, sadness, satisfaction, and joy and so many small and great lessons to be learned (although McBride is never preaching here). 

I picked this one up without knowing anything about it. Now I doubt I will ever forget it. 

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

Read by Dave Grohl

10 Hours, 35 Minutes

Published October 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers

Publisher's Summary: 

So, I've written a book. 

Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ("It's a piece of cake! Just do four hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!") I have decided to tell these stories just as I have always done, in my own voice. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. 

This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters...the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.

My Thoughts: 

I love music, almost all kinds of music, from all eras. I've known who Dave Grohl was Nirvana hit big. I'm a huge Foo Fighters fan. So imagine my surprise, when I said to my assistant that I was listening to a book by Dave Grohl and she said, "Who's that?" Who'd have thought that reading a book would afford me the opportunity to introduce someone to music they didn't know? Yet more proof of the power of reading! 

Anyhoos, about the book. Dave Grohl grew up in suburban Virginia and refers to it as a Wonderbread existence that he knew at a very young age that he was not cut out for. A punk rock fan at a young age, Grohl taught himself to play the drums. When he was still in high school, he convinced his mother to allow him to drop out of school (even though she was a teacher) and he was soon touring with the band Scream. Life was tough and Grohl grew up fast. When he was just 21, he was introduced to Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselić, who were looking for a new drummer for their band. Their rise was meteoric but more than Cobain could handle and four years after Grohl met him, Cobain committed suicide. 

Grohl drifted for a while after that, recording on his own and even doing a drumming stint with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (they offered him a permanent gig, but he declined). Convinced to sign again with a record label, Grohl decided he didn't want to be a solo act and started bringing in other musicians. Soon Foo Fighters was born and the rest, as they say, is stadium superstar history. 

If you've ever been to a Foo Fighters concert, seen Grohl on television, or watched him on social media, you're going to find that Dave Grohl the author is exactly the same guy you've seen. He's funny, down-to-earth, incredibly appreciative of the life he's got, and, probably, as obsessed about music as he was the day he decided to teach himself to drum on pillows in his bedroom. He fangirls and name drops and it never seems overly gushy. He is, perhaps, more in awe of his mom than of anyone else he knows. He comes off as a loving father (he once flew from Australia to California and back again in a little over 24 hours just to make a father-daughter dance). 

The chapters were clearly written as individual stories (some repetition appears because of this) to create a through story. It feels just as if you sat down with Grohl and asked him about himself. He is enthusiastic, vulnerable, and funny. I can't recommend the audiobook enough; it amplifies that experience tenfold. One warning: this is a book written by a rock and roll guy and it has the language to prove that. If you know me in real life, you know that doesn't bother me and you're probably already expecting it. If I gave stars to books, this one would be a five-star read for me!

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Read by David Case

Published August 1995 by Riverhead

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Rob is a pop-music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films; top five Elvis Costello songs; top five episodes of Cheers. 

Rob tries dating a singer, but maybe it’s just that he’s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft-rock CDs might not be so bad.

My Thoughts:

I adore the movie adaptation of this book, mostly because I adore John Cusack who plays Rob Fleming. I already knew that but this book reinforced that it was Cusack who did that for me, rather than the character, because on the written page I really, really did not like Rob. 

Maybe it's because as the mother of a men and aunt of more men who are nearly the same age, I have no tolerance for men who suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome. Sure, it's fine for you to really, really enjoy records (or gaming, or sports, or even Dungeons and Dragons) but they cannot...I repeat cannot...define your life at the expense of doing things like making sure you can support yourself. And records define Rob (and Barry and Dick). Also, Rob is just not a very nice guy. Early in his "romantic" life, he engineers the breakup of a friend just so he can pursue the ex-girlfriend. As an adult he cheats on his live-in girlfriend. He sleeps with another woman just because she has a recording contract and he's hoping that maybe she'll include him on a record cover. 

In the movie, because Rob was played by Cusack it was understandable to believe that there was a good person in there just waiting to come out. And, in the end, he did. In the book, we don't get that preconceived idea about Rob so that even as Rob and Laura work to patch things up, you're never entirely sure that Rob has what it takes to make a relationship work. Luckily, by that point in the book, I did finally like him enough to hope that he did. 

Now I need to go watch the movie again. Because the parts of this book that are funny (and there is quite a lot of funny here) shine in the movie. 

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Read by Steven Hartly

Published January 2018 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop’s owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. 

Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind. Can a man who is so in tune with other people’s needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him? The journey that these two quirky, wonderful characters make in order to overcome their emotional baggage speaks to the healing power of music—and love—in this poignant, ultimately joyful work of fiction.

My Thoughts:

I'm struggling these days writing reviews, explaining what I liked (or didn't) about a book in a way that doesn't sound exactly the same as the last review I wrote. Since I'm prone to talk about the publisher's summary in my reviews, this time I'm going to let that be my guide for the whole review. 

Sentence one: it's important to know that the book is set in 1988 because it's at that time the CDs took over the music world. Frank, though, refuses to sell anything other than vinyl. He was raised on vinyl. It's the way his mother showed him love, teaching him everything he knew about music, and life, by having him listen to her extensive vinyl collection. It was the only thing his mother left him, other than this piece of advice: "If you learn one thing from me, make it this - love is not nice. Stay away from it, Frank." And so Frank has stayed away from love. 

Sentence two: On that dead-end street in that run-down suburb there remain a few shops whose owners have become their own kind of family, led by Frank, who has never had any other family. This family is getting smaller. A big developer is trying to buy up the block and the local council is doing everything they can to help them. In the same way that you're almost certain that Frank and Ilse will wind up together, you're convinced that Goliath is going to win this time.

Sentence three: Frank is a listener. That's his secret for knowing which piece of music is just what a person needs, like The Troggs' Wild Thing, for a fussy baby and Aretha Franklin's Oh No Not My Baby for a man who's been jilted. It's also the reason people are drawn to him.

Sentence four: Ilse didn't walk into Frank's shop. She fainted in front of it then left almost as soon as she recovered, leaving behind a handbag and mystery. When she returns for the handbag, Frank realizes that he can't "hear" what music Ilse needs; without that, he has no idea how to talk to her. He is hopelessly drawn to her when she asks him to teach her about music. We are lucky enough to be in on the lessons.  

I'm a huge fan of Joyce's; she's an "auto-read" author for me. Her characters are always so real - flawed, quirky, hurt, humane, human. There is something to be learned in every book (here, of course, it's about music) but Joyce always teaches us with a light touch, giving readers exactly what they need to know to be drawn into the story. I love music, the way it can, as Frank knows, affect your mood, make you want to move, draw you into a story told through musical notes and lyrics. I loved learning the stories behind the music almost as much as I loved the relationship between Frank and Ilse. The ending here is a bit drawn out and then a bit improbable, but not enough to ruin a book that I very much enjoyed reading. 

As soon as I finished the book, I went to Spotify to see if I could put together a playlist of the songs in this book - turns out there were already three or four out there. I highly recommend that you have one of them playing if you chose to read this book in print. 

Life: It Goes On - May 17

Happy Sunday!

How did this happen? How are we only two weeks away from the end of spring? It seemed like time was moving so slowly for so long; all of those funny memes that said something to the effect of: February was 29 days long, March was 17 weeks, and April was 5 years long felt so true. And now, here we are, almost to summer.

My Big Guy, who has suffered all of this remarkably well for a guy who likes to be going somewhere or doing something all of the time, has handled all of this isolation better than I would have thought. But this morning he was the first guy at the lumbar store, picking up wood to build his own corn hole game set. When I questioned the need for something else that will clutter up my garage, he told me he's going to need something to do this summer. Fair enough. I'm just wondering if he's remembered that someone is going to have to sew the bean bags and I didn't ask to have anything more added to my to-do list!

Last Week I:

Listened To: I finished Colum McCann's Apeirogon on Thursday but can't seem to settle on anything to listen to next. Which is bad because I have three books on audio to listen to right now.

Watched: Cats last night on The Shows Must Go On, which Andrew Lloyd Webber has been providing for free for the past few weeks. It's no secret that I'm a musical geek so I'm sure it's surprising to hear that I've never heard all of Cats before. Maybe even more surprising to hear that I don't get it. Honestly, I was a little bored and might have shut it off except that I was annoyed with BG and left it on just to annoy him. I did like it better once I read that it was based on T. S. Eliot poems.

Read: I'm scrambling to catch up with a readalong of Gods, Graves and Scholars, a book about the history of archaeology. This is certainly an instance of a readalong getting me to read a book I might not have otherwise and of me being glad to have had the push.

Made: Ricotta-stuffed jumbo shells, chicken nachos, and lots of salads. Miss H bought a giant container of spinach last weekend for the dinner she made me and we are scrambling to get it all used before it starts to go bad.

Enjoyed: Being out of the house for a couple of hours to get my hair done. I'm not sure which was better for me, psychologically - getting rid of the grey or doing something that felt (except for the mask) almost normal. Then Friday it was warm enough at last for what I call my Tier One friends and I to do a socially distancing happy hour. It was so good to see them in person but so weird not to be able to hug them!


This Week I’m: 

Planning: I ordered a floating shelf a month or so ago and thought I knew where I was going to hang it. Until I realized that hanging it in that spot meant I needed to figure out a new place to hang hand towels. Of course, as soon as I started actually working on getting the shelf hung, it meant everything had to come off the walls to clean, patch holes, touch up paint...you know how that goes. Short story long, I'm planning to finish that project today. 

Thinking About: Getting rid of stuff. I know I just did 40 Bags in 40 Days but our neighbors got a dumpster that is much bigger than what they need for the project they're working on and told us we could put stuff in it, too. So far, all of the pallets Miss H had been saving and two patio chairs have gone into it. But, damn, I want to make sure I've taken full advantage of this opportunity!

Feeling: Productive. I got a lot of gardening work done yesterday between finding homes for some new plants BG got me and moving some lily-of-the-valley. I got the bathroom cleared, cleaned and prepped for painting. I got as much done as I could on my wedding album project until I get the rest of my supplies. I'm having one of those weekends where the more productive you are, the more productive you want to be.

Looking forward to: Book club this week. I'm trying to figure out if it will be warm enough to do a driveway, social distancing, version this month instead of Zoom.

Question of the week: What projects have you been working on through all of this?

Life: It Goes On - February 2

Happy Sunday! It is truly a beautiful day in the neighborhood today. It's in the mid-50's, the sun is shining, and my back door is thrown open to let some fresh air into the house. In fact, it was sunny yesterday, as well, the first sunshine we'd seen in a week. I don't know about you but I'm so much more productive when the sun is shining. I knocked out almost all of the cleaning I was planning on doing this weekend yesterday so today can be spent on doing the things that are more fun.

The ground hog is forecasting an early spring, the weather is great, it's a palindrome date (02-02-2020!), and the Super Bowl is today. What more could a girl want?!

Last Week I:

Listened To: I finished Ruth Reichl's memoir, Save Me The Plums and started Dani Shapiro's memoir Inheritance. I was a little hesitant about jumping straight into another memoir but they are so different and, so far, I'm equally impressed with Shapiro's book so it's all good.

Watched: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Squirrel Nut Zippers in concert on Thursday with The Big Guy and some friends. Both bands are very different but both put on a great show and had the crowd on their feet dancing and clapping.

Read: I finished I'll Be Gone In The Dark and Make It Scream, Make It Burn and started Code Name Hèlenè. I've read about 60 pages and am racking my brain trying to remember which book I feel like I just read much the same story in; Pam Jenoff's The Lost Girls of Paris, I think.

Made: Guys, I actually cooked this week! It was The Big Guy's 60th birthday on Tuesday so we had a special family dinner. I made marinated pork chops (the best marinade I think I've ever made), candied carrots, Hasselback potatoes, and a new-to-me chocolate layered cake with an absolutely delicious frosting.

Enjoyed: Book club on Tuesday (those ladies can always lift my spirits!) and watching BG and Mini-him work together to try to fix my vacuum. They spent two hours working on it and were both frustrated not to be able to get it fixed but I thoroughly enjoyed watching them work together.


This Week I’m: 

Planning: My calendar is completely blank as far as to-do things is concerned. You know how much I love weeks like that! If it's warm enough, I'll probably get back to work on the basement reorganization project. If not, there's plenty that needs to be done in my office...again.


Thinking About: Even though it's just the beginning of February, I'm sort of over my winter decor so I'm thinking about putting away the snowmen, pine cones, and greenery. Although putting away the snowmen early tends to be a jinx, so we'll see.

Feeling: Happy - see paragraph two!

Looking forward to: Traveling along vicariously as Mini-him leaves for two weeks in Japan on Tuesday. The mom in me is a little anxious about him traveling to Asia with the corona virus spreading, but I'm so excited for him so have so many new experiences. 

Question of the week: Show of hands - who's ready for winter to be over?

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Published March 2019 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Everyone knows DAISY JONES and THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones and The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.


My Thoughts:
I grew up with music as a part of my life from the time I was a little girl; sometimes my dad allowed me to fall asleep on the living room sofa, listening to albums on the stereo. I came to love most kinds of music that way. But it was in the 1970's, as I went through my teens, that music became truly important to me. I listened to the radio every night and started buying 45's to play on the record player I had gotten when I turned ten. I listened to it all - Cat Stevens, ABBA, Donna Summers, The Eagles, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Bee Gees, Queen, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynard, Led Zeppelin. I read Seventeen and Rolling Stone to keep up with the fashions and the bands.

Daisy Jones and The Six was like a step back in time for me. I could picture Billy in his Canadian tuxedo, Daisy in her short-shorts and tank top; I could almost hear the music they would have been making, knowing what was being done at that time. But even if you didn't grow up in the 1970's, this book will draw you in. If you've ever had a dream, if you've ever gone looking for love, if you've ever been in love with someone you can't have or who doesn't love you, if you've ever struggled with your demons, if you've ever felt under appreciated or overwhelmed, you will find a character in this book who speaks to you.

This book reads like oral history of Daisy Jones and The Six and the people involved in their lives; Jenkins Reid has said she styled it on VH1's Behind The Music and the documentary History of The Eagles. It's an incredibly unique story telling idea and I can't imagine trying to keep all of those story lines in check so that they could be layered over each other.

Kudos to the person(s) who made the decision to have each character read by a different person - it certainly makes it easier to track who is speaking but, more importantly, it makes it feel more real. And it really does feel real. I enjoyed it very much.

Life: It Goes On - July 7

Happy July! I hope you've all had a great week and got to celebrate the Fourth exactly that way you enjoy. As for me, we spent the day with family, friends and my parents' neighbors at their neighborhood's 44th annual Fourth of July breakfast. The breakfast was first held in my parents' back yard in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial. My mom cooked all of the food that year and my dad gave a short speech. On Thursday, he again spoke, talking about some lesser known figures who fought for our independence, a reminder that all of us has a part to play in our government.

Last Week I:

Listened To: My copy of Black Leopard, Red Wolf expired on Tuesday and I returned both it and the print copy. I've put a hold on the audio again; but, honestly, I'm not sure if I'll actually finish it. I've read/listened to 500 pages and I'm only a third of the way through it with no clue what it actually going on. While I'm waiting for my next book to become available, I'm catching up on some podcasts and listening my Spotify playlists, including a new playlist of covers.

Watched: It was time for my annual viewing of the musical 1776 and, while I was at it, The Music Man on the Fourth. Love them both!

Read: I finished Helen Phillips' The Need and I'm almost finished with Karl Marlantes' Deep River, which is a behemoth.

Made: A new dip for food day at work - cookie dough dip - which was delicious but, let's be honest, didn't really taste like cookie dough.

Enjoyed: A four-day weekend! I haven't gotten as much done as I'd hoped but I have gotten lots of reading done and have had a lot of down time which was essential!

This Week I’m: 

Planning: On finishing up a couple of pieces I'm refinishing and a mini-update to Miss H's room.

Thinking About: Crafting a mantle for Mini-him's apartment fireplace. He's designed what he wants and I'm in charge of making it happen.

Feeling: Relaxed!

Looking forward to: A week without anything on the calendar.

Question of the week: Musicals - yea or nay?

In This Ground by Beth Castrodale

In This Ground by Beth Castrodale
Published September 2018 by Garland Press
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher through TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary:
Just as his indie-rock band was poised to make it big, Ben Dirjery traded it all in for fatherhood and the stability of a job at Bolster Hill Cemetery. Now closing in on fifty, the former guitarist finds himself divorced and at loose ends, and still haunted by the tragic death of his former band’s lead singer, who is buried, literally, under Ben’s feet. Then Ben’s daughter begins questioning a past he has tried to bury. If he can face her questions, he might finally put to rest his guilt over his bandmate’s death, and bring music back into his life.


My Thoughts:
When I agreed to read and review this book for the tour, it was based on this summary, a summary that almost exclusively focuses on the music aspect of the book. But I missed the shovel on the cover of the book and that is a better clue to what this book is about than the guitar that also appears. Music plays a big part in the book but death, and the way we deal with it, is the real story here.

There's a lot going on in this book: there are multiple music stories at play, Castrodale looks at the ways burials are changing, there are a lot of relationships Castrodale explores, a great deal about mushrooms, there's some mystery, and there's even a side story about death in India. It doesn't all work; there's just too much in too short a book and some of the side stories take away from the main story lines. For a while, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish the book; I was having such a hard time settling in to it. It was partly saved by the fact that I bailed on the last book I was to supposed to review by TLC Book Tours. But it was mostly saved by the fact that I started to really want to know what happened to Ben to cause him to give up on music. I started to want to find out how he was going to talk the cemetery board into approving green burials (let's be honest, this is the kind of book that you already know that he'll succeed, it's just a matter or how he's going to make that happen). And I started to care about Ben. I wanted to see if he could come to peace with his past, if he could succeed in his relationships.

Castrodale's history as a newspaper reporter comes into play in the pieces she inserts to introduce each chapter, often pieces that mimic newspaper clippings. I found it an interesting way to add a layer to the book and also to move the story along.

It's not a perfect book but it's an unusual book that makes you care about its characters and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Castrodale. For more reviews, check out the full tour.

Castrodale's Twitter picture!

Beth Castrodale has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. Her novels include Marion Hatley, a finalist for a Nilsen Prize for a First Novel from Southeast Missouri State University Press (published by Garland Press in 2017), and In This Ground (Garland Press, 2018). Beth’s stories have appeared in such journals as Printer’s Devil Review, The Writing Disorder, and the Mulberry Fork Review. Get a free copy of her novel Gold River when you sign up for her e-newsletter, at http://www.bethcastrodale.com/gold-river/.

Connect with Beth Castrodale on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.