Turning Pages

Summer is here and Tucson is hotter than . .well any place I can imagine.  Like most folks living here I love the winters, blue skies, lots of sunshine it is a wonderful time to spend the afternoon outside reading.  Folks living in snow country look forward to getting out in the summer and catching a few rays.  We desert rats hunker down in the house for the summer.  Really southern Arizona is just like Minnesota, only outdoor seasons are reversed.   My winter tan is beginning to fade, but it is too darn hot to be outside.

I’ve read several interesting books the last few months and thought I’d share them with you.  The first two really captivated my interest they are very different but intriguing.  

I’ll start with a quote from the ‘Midnight Library’.

‘Between life and death there is a library’ she said, ‘and within that library, the shelves go on for ever.  Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived.  To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’

That idea fascinates me, how would things be different if we had an opportunity to go back and change our regrets, taken a different path how would our lives turn out?  So you have the premise for the novel by Matt Haig.  I enjoyed the heroines trip to the library.  Sometimes it’s worth thinking about the choices we’ve made and how they brought us to where we are now. Would you change anything?

The second interesting read was ‘The Book of Longings’ by  Sue Monk Kidd.  This book poses the question ,’What if Jesus was married?’  Ana tells the story of meeting Jesus at the well.  I won’t give the plot away but it was a very enjoyable read.  Food for thought even. Ms. Kidd doesn’t write to a particular genre, but her women are strong characters.  ‘The Invention of Wings’ is a novel about a Charleston slave given as a handmaid to an eleven year old girl.   Their lives spans thirty years together. She also wrote, ’The Secret Life of Bees’ a popular book several years ago.   

 I loved ‘Anxious People’, by Swedish author, Fredrik Backman.  An eclectic group of people gather to view an apartment for sale.  The various couples are not always lovable but I loved them anyway.  It is a delightful book.  Monty and my sister, Marilyn, both gave it a thumbs up for enjoyment. 

The ‘Stationery Shop’ by Marjan Kamali takes place in Iran. ‘The Calligrapher’s Daughter’ by Eugenia Kim and ‘The Kinship of Secrets’ are both stories from Korea. The setting for ‘The Searchers’ by Tana French is a small Irish village. I enjoyed each of these books. Who doesn’t love a quaint Irish village with a mystery to solve, I learned some Korean history while I enjoyed the stories from Ms. Kim.  The Stationery Shop was a touching love story from a war torn county.     

My favorite Kate Quinn book is ‘The Alice Network’, she followed that book with ‘The Huntress’. Her most recent book is ‘The Rose Code’ a historically based novel about Benchley Park, the code breaking facility outside London during WWII.  The story is fiction but the people and events are related to history.  Benchley Park was closed after WWII but recently reopened as a museum  dedicated  the people who spent their days breaking codes during the war. Two of the women she based this story on attended the grand opening.  

The ‘Flight Girls’ by Noelle Salazar is a story about the young women who flew planes during WWII. Some of these women had been flying crop dusters and mail runs since they were teens.  They joined the war effort by becoming flight instructors and ferrying planes for the military.  Again, this story is based on fact, this group of women were recently recognized by the government and given, long over due, military honors and benefits.  

‘The Immoralists’, by Chloe Benjamin is a story of five siblngs  who visit a physic. The physic is said to know the exact day a person will die. (why they did this is a mystery me) But you can guess how this story unfolds.  

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng was entertaining even if the people were a little off the wall.  John Grisham didn’t disappoint with the ‘Racketeer’ and ‘A Time For Mercy’.

I discovered a new author, Laine Moriarty.  I enjoyed  ‘The Husband’s Secret’ and ‘Nine Perfect Strangers”’.  These aren’t soul searching books but enjoyable. 

Toss in a bunch of ‘beach reads’ by Elin Hilderbrand.  I love her stories about Nantucket, and enjoyed her three book series taking place on St. John’s Island.   There is something so comforting about a sandy beach, family ties and of course, romance.    

Put all this together and it was a good winter.   Well, except for that pandemic thing.