Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith

Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith

8 hours, 8 minutes

Read by Lisette Lecat

Publisher's Summary: 

In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of the only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies and others, investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important “Government Man,” and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Yet her business is having money problems, and when other difficulties arise at her fiancé’s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she discovers the reliable Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is more complicated then he seems.

My Thoughts: 

My second book about morality this week! To be fair, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books all (well, at least in the three I've read so far) deal with morality to a degree. Also, to be fair, the morality of the beautiful girls is only a tiny part of this book. As with all of the series (again, this is based on only three books but I'm certain that it's a formula that will continue through the series), there is a lot going on in this book. 

When Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni (and truly, he is never called anything else in the books so I can't just give you a first name) seemingly abandons his beloved Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, leaving it in the hands of his two slacker apprentices, his fiancee, Mma Ramotswe steps in. First she needs to figure out what's ailing him and while she waits for him to get better, she also needs to keep both his business and hers afloat. Enter her secretary/assistant detective, Mma Makutsi, who is recruited to first become a secretary for the garage but soon becomes the assistant manager. Surprisingly, she is just what both businesses need. In short order she has the apprentices working hard and business thriving at the garage. Then, while Mma Ramotswe is out of town solving one case, Mma Makutsi lands a big case that will help keep the detective agency afloat. 

One thing that appeals to me about these books is that, while the cases are always solved, the resolution is not always so easy. Her Mma Ramotswe manages to uncover the poisoner but then  finds both a way to heal the family and protect the poisoner. She truly cares about people and is always looking for the way to protect those involved while also resolving the problem. 

These are the perfect books for me to read between other books - not too fluffy, not too dark, and even though I don't always know what the resolution will be to a case, I always know that things will end well for everyone.  And that's just what I need in a book every so often. I've become very fond of these characters and I'm looking forward to the next book. 

In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

331 pages

Published March 2020 by Lake Union Publishing

Publisher's Summary: 

Life is over in an instant for sixteen-year-old Finn Miller when a devastating car accident tumbles her and ten others over the side of a mountain. Suspended between worlds, she watches helplessly as those she loves struggle to survive.

Impossible choices are made, decisions that leave the survivors tormented with grief and regret. Unable to let go, Finn keeps vigil as they struggle to reclaim their shattered lives. Jack, her father, who seeks vengeance against the one person he can blame other than himself; her best friend, Mo, who bravely searches for the truth as the story of their survival is rewritten; her sister Chloe, who knows Finn lingers and yearns to join her; and her mother, Ann, who saved them all but is haunted by her decisions. Finn needs to move on, but how can she with her family still in pieces?

My Thoughts: 

My bookworm coworker recommended this one to me after she read it with her bookclub. She didn't tell me much about it but her enthusiasm convinced me to pick it up without even reading the summary. Which is why I thought seriously about not giving you the summary to this one. I did not see what happened on page forty coming at all! 

The Millers are a family teetering on the brink - Jack and Ann are barely holding it together; Ann doesn't know how to handle their teenaged son, Oz; Jack has given up his job to care for Oz; Ann and Chloe are barely on speaking terms; and poor Finn feels a little invisible. Still, Jack thinks a family ski trip is just the thing to bring the family together. Along for the ride is Finn's best friend, Mo; Ann's bestfriend "Aunt" Karen and her husband "Uncle" Bob and daughter Natalie; and Chloe's boyfriend, Vance. The family has no sooner arrived in their striped down camper at their cabin in the mountains when they turn around to leave for dinner. Along the way, they pick up a young man, Kyle, whose car has broken down. He has hardly joined the group when Jack has to swerve to avoid hitting a deer in the road, sliding into a guardrail that gives way. 

How to give readers the full picture of what happens to each of the people in that camper for the next couple of days? One of them dies, allowing them to become an omniscient narrator. This allows us to follow Chloe when she follows Vance, despite her mother's protestations, who heads out to find help. It allows us to follow Ann and Kyle when they also head off for help. And it allows us to stay in the camper with the remaining family and friends. It allows us to see the choices that are made. And it allows us to make judgements that Redfearn will make us question later. 

Because although the first 100 or so pages of this book seem to be a survival tale, at its heart, this book is a morality tale. Our omniscient narrator forces us to question our opinions, making us consider if one person's choices were better or worse than another's. You think you know, as you're reading the book, what you would do given the same situation, what the morally "right" thing to do would be. But Redfearn will make you rethink that answer. Would you really do the "right" thing if it meant your own family member was more at risk? 

And what about the aftermath? How would you heal from what happened? How do you heal yourself mentally and grieve? How much of you can be spared to help everyone else heal? There is a lot to be unpacked here. My coworker's book club read this one and she said they had a great discussion, including about 20 minutes discussing the author's afterword where Redfearn discusses the personal experience that inspired the book. Does the book have flaws? Yes - there are unanswered questions that don't necessarily feel like they were meant to be unanswered, the narrator often appears wise beyond their years, and some things happen that seem entirely improbable. But it kept me racing through it, hoping for the healing and hope that Redfearn delivers on in the end. 

Life: It Goes On - April 24

Happy Sunday from the windswept plains! Seriously, it's been ridiculously windy here most days for a couple of months. I understand why people literally lost their minds because of the wind when pioneers were first settling here and I don't have to listen to it whistling through the walls and windows of my house. Still, it's full on spring, at long last - things are green, we're getting much needed rain, and the yard is filled with birds and baby rabbits. 

Last Week I: 

 Listened To: Morality For Beautiful Girls, the third book in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Up next is Questlove's Music Is History.

Watched: We finished the latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last night. I didn't realize we were on the last episode until it was done and I'm more than a little sad to not have saved it. 

Read: I finished In An Instant and started The School for Good Mothers. 

Made: Seriously, I might as well take this category off my weekly posts! I am, today, making broccoli soup because I accidentally ordered well more broccoli on my grocery order than I intended to order. 

Enjoyed: Yesterday Lincoln held something called The Big Event, whereby people can request a crew of college students to come help with things they need done around the house. We got a crew of nine young men to work at my dad's. They got straight to work and knocked out everything on my dad's list in just a couple of hours. We even took time for a cinnamon roll (my mom always served the kids cinnamon rolls so we had to keep that up) and water break, during which my dad regaled the young men with stories about the year my parents got an all-girl crew who astonished them with their hard work and his time at the university. Loved seeing those young men so attentive to my dad!

This Week I’m:  

Planning: Using the inch-by-inch I learned from someone I follow on Instagram, I continue to work on my purging and organizing project, focusing now on the basement. That will continue this week. Mini-him is coming for lunch today and I'm going to put him to work going through the things he still has stored at my house to make sure what's here are all things he really wants saved. My guess is that there is a lot that I've been holding on to more because of the memories I have than those that he does. 

Thinking About: It's baptism day for my great-nephew and I'm so wishing I were there to celebrate with the family; I've been thinking about them all day. 

Feeling: Resigned to the fact that my sciatic pain won't resolve itself and frustrated that it's almost impossible to find a doctor in my network that will take a new patient. 

Looking forward to: Book club on Tuesday. 

Question of the week: What's one of your favorite low-cal, high-flavor go-to meals? 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

212 pages

Read by Peter Francis James

Published 1958

Publisher's Summary: 

Okonkwo is born into poverty, with a wastrel for a father. Driven by ambition, he works tirelessly to gain the prosperity of many fields and wives and prestige in his village. But he is harsh as well as diligent. As he sees the traditions of his people eroded by white missionaries and government officials, he lashes out in anger. Things Fall Apart traces the growing friction between village leaders and Europeans determined to save the heathen souls of Africa. But its hero, a noble man who is driven by destructive forces, speaks a universal tongue.

My Thoughts: 

I'll be honest, I know this one is considered a classic (I know because it's on my Classics Club list) but I really struggled with understanding why for most of the book. Perhaps that has something to do with how I read it; this one turned out to be a listen/read/listen one for me when my audiobook loan expired and then I chose to check it out again. Perhaps it's because I read it through the prism of my own moral expectations, judging Okonkwo by standards that wouldn't have applied to him. As time has passed, as the lessons of the book have sunk in, I'm finding a greater appreciation for the book, especially in light of the era in which it was written. Still, because of all of this, I'm struggling with putting my thoughts into words. Instead, let me give you this from Kirkus Reviews (and if you've been here long, you know how rare it is for me to even agree with Kirkus Reviews, let alone defer to them so that will tell you something about how much I love this review):

"Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.

Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor."

That last line - wow! It makes it so clear why this book is considered so important. I do highly recommend that you listen to this one if you choose to pick it up; instead of stumbling over names I can't figure out how to pronounce (if even in my own head), the book flows smoothly and the names no longer feel foreign. 

Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series #2) by Alexander McCall Smith

Tear of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series #2) by Alexander McCall Smith

Read by Lisette Lecat

7 Hours 49 Minutes

Published September 2002 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunning proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana. In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers an unscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappeared into the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolving uncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kind man, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talented secretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with a mark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two.

My Thoughts: 

After just one book in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series, I already knew what to expect from the books in the series, not the least of which is that these would be detective stories that had far more to do with the lives of Precious Ramotswe, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the people around them than the actual cases that the detective agency takes on. 

In Tear of the Giraffe, we pick up where we left off with Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni having recently become engaged. Now they must decide which of their homes they will move into after they are married. It becomes clear to Mma Ramotswe quickly that her place on Zebra Road is far preferable but this means that Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni's maid will need to be let go and she is not at all happy to be losing her golden goose. She's been running a side hustle in the house while her employer has been off to work and she's bound and determined to convince him that his fiancee must go. 

That's the first of Mma Ramotswe's problems in this book. Then there is Grace Makutsi, the detective agency's secretary, who wants to take on a bigger role, a couple of cases to be solved with delicacy, and an orphanage matron whose ability to manipulate people changes the lives of Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. 

Precious Ramotswe is a sensible woman whose case solving relies on intuition and observation. McCall Smith's writing is equally sensible - nothing fancy about it. Still he manages to give readers vivid pictures of the appearance of his characters and their surroundings. Where he does get lyrical is when he talks about the country of Botswana, which becomes one of the series' characters. 

These are cozy mysteries that will have readers considering morality, decency, and our ability to learn and change. I feel absolutely certain that Lisette Lecat's reading of the books is adding to my enjoyment of the books which makes them even more perfect as books to be listened to when I need something quick and not too heavy to listen to between heavier books. I've already started the next book!