Nevermore: Ex Hex, The Sentence, Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years, Number One Is Walking

 Reported by Garry

 

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling is a fun, supernatural rom-com, though our reader notes it does have an “R” rating. Vivienne Jones is a young witch whose heart was broken by the dashing Rhys Penhallow. Doing what any crossed witch would do, Vivienne cast a curse on Rhys, but assumed that it would simply be an annoyance more than anything else. When Rhys comes back to town for Graves Glen’s annual fall festival, Vivienne discovers how very wrong she was, and how out of control her hex has become. The two exes must work together to break the break-up curse before it destroys their hometown.  PP 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is another supernatural story with an especially interesting twist – the author is a character in her own book, and the story takes place in the bookstore owned by the author. Tookie is a young Ojibwe woman, newly out of prison. She starts working at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis (the real-life bookstore owned by Erdrich), and shortly thereafter the store becomes haunted by the ghost of the store’s best, but most difficult, client. The ghost story takes a sudden turn when George Floyd is murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, and COVID-19 shuts the country down. These two storylines intertwine in an unexpected and gripping novel by one of America’s premier writers.  MH

Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years; The Adventures of the Great Detective in India and Tibet by Jamyang Norbu. Sir Conan Doyle never explained the two years that Sherlock Holmes spent after that fateful plunge off the Reichenbach Falls, so Tibetan author Jamyang Norbu has. In Norbu’s vision, Holmes makes his way to Tibet with the help of Huree Chunder Mookherjee (a character from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim), Holmes makes his way to Lhasa and helps the newly anointed 13^th Dalai Lama secure his place against the Imperial Chinese forces. According to our reader, this is a great mystery that will keep readers enthralled for hours, and will especially delight those who appreciate writers like Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.  AH 

Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions by Steve Martin is the self-effacing new memoir by one of America’s leading funny men. Steve Martin has been acting on TV and in the movies since the late 1960s. Sharing anecdotes from his time on such movies as Roxanne, The Jerk, Father of the Bride and many more, Martin shares insights into his time in front of and behind the camera over the past forty years. This book is illustrated by New York Times cartoonist Harry Bliss, and our reader especially loved what the cartoons added to the stories of Martin’s years in the entertainment business.  CD.

 

Also mentioned:

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

That Night by Alice McDermott

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent by Sara Kendzior

Left of Eden by Dennis Broe

Polar Exposure: An All-Women’s Expedition to the North Pole by Felicity Aston

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

All the Broken Places by John Boyne

Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies by Rossi Anastopoulo

Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

Trouble on Tybee by Tammy Marshall

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

Hidden in Snow by Vivica Sten

Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II by Bruce Henderson

Great Short Books: A Year of Reading -- Briefly by Kenneth C. Davis

Maus Now: Selected Writing edited by Hillary Chute

Nevermore: Dan Brown, Christopher Coake, DNA and Game of Thrones

Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, was the subject of discussion in more than one Nevermore meeting. Robert Langdon, the professor of symbology from The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, etc. awakens in a hospital in Florence with a touch of amnesia.  The next thing he knows, he’s on the run and following Brown’s trademark trail of codes, ciphers and clues. The first reviewer was definitely unimpressed, feeling that the book had too much padding-- much in the form of architectural description. Another reviewer found it very slow going at first, but then the plot did pick up.  He too noted the abundance of information on various Italian cities and architecture as well as on Dante. Finally, the book was sort of summed up as "excellent plot, terrible narration."

Another reviewer highly recommended a collection of short stories by Christopher Coake entitled We’re In Trouble.  As the title promises, each story opens with a character in some sort of serious trouble, love in the face of death.  Each character is challenged and the reader anxiously waits to see how the character will react.  Our reader said she was instantly drawn into each story and thinks Coake is definitely a writer to watch.  The book earned strong reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin is proving popular across various media.  The recent HBO series has attracted a wide and avid viewership, and putting the original novels back on the library’s reserve list in both printed and audio formats.  A Nevermore member put in a plug for the new graphic novel version of the books, and requested we get the others in the series as they come out.

Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine was mentioned by another reader.  This was Erdrich’s first novel and revolves around two Chippewa families, spanning some fifty years. The novel moves back and forth in time, and is actually a series of interwoven short stories that form a whole.

Two non-fiction books were mentioned, both involving DNA.  Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer uses the latest genetic, archaeological, and linguistic findings to determine the composition of the British people.  Oppenheimer argues that the bulk of the genetic heritage predates the Anglo-Saxons and is a great deal more complex than was previously believed.  The subject is fascinating, but our reviewer found the book to be almost too technical.

A similar comment was made about The Violinist’s Thumb by Sam Kean.  The title refers to the Paganini’s extremely flexible fingers, the result of a genetic mutation which aided his musical ability but may also have shortened his life. Other parts of the book discuss an assortment of human and some non-human DNA (Neanderthals, for example) which makes for an interesting book, although the reviewer said there was a bit of a slog through the more technical aspects of DNA.