Nevermore: Brave Enough, Parable of the Sower, Move Like Water

 

Nevermore 3-12-24

Reported by Rita

Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

A collection of quotes from the columnist and author captures her wisdom, courage, honesty, spirit, and outspoken humor.

Quick and fun – a real attention grabber.  – CD     5 stars

 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

Very well written – sometimes horrifying. – MH     Not rated

 

Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea by Hannah Stowe

As a young girl, Hannah Stowe was raised at the tide's edge on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, falling asleep to the sweep of the lighthouse beam. Now in her mid-twenties, working as a marine biologist and sailor, Stowe draws on her professional experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean to explore the human relationship with wild waters.

Spiritually beautiful with great illustrations.  – AH     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

Always Faithful by Jerry McNeal

Three Years a Traveler: One Woman, One Dog, Seven RVs, and the Path Less Traveled to Heal the Heart by Leslie White

Home Again: a Novel by Kristin Hannah

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

The Wilderwomen by Ruth Emmie Lang

The Rosewood Casket: a Ballad Novel by Sharyn McCrumb

We'll Call You if We Need You : Experiences of Women Working Construction by Susan Eisenberg

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life by Robin S. Sharma

A Wild and Heavenly Place: a Novel by Robin Oliveira

Always Looking Up: the Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox

New Books

The Fortune Seller: a Novel by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World-- and How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo

Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson

They Included Me: A Five-Decade Teaching Career by Jerry L. Jones

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Evie Sage is looking for a job. Employment isn’t that easy to come by in her fantasy/magical/medieval kingdom of Rennedawn, and soft hearted Evie stepped aside from her last job offer because the other applicant with multiple children hanging from her cloak looked so darn needy. Nonetheless, Evie is the main support of her household containing her ailing father and her young sister. She simply must find a job!

Cue the walk home through the dangerous forest where Evie gets caught between King Benedict’s guards and the man they are chasing. And it’s not just any man either—it’s The Villain.

The wanted posters for The Villain portray an old man with a gray beard and gruesome teeth. Even though this man exudes a sense of danger, he looks nothing like those posters. He’s young, strong, and quite handsome. As he clasps his hand over Evie’s mouth to keep her from crying out, she can’t help but notice that The Villain is rather different from the man who she and many others in the kingdom fear.

After The Villain whisks Evie away to his secret lair, he can’t just let her leave. What’s next? Her head hanging from a hook in his entryway? No, he gives her a job: Assistant to the Villain.

This novel is snappy and engaging, even if you have to choose to accept a few of the more unusual premises and plot twists. Evie quickly makes herself invaluable running The Villain’s business. The romance part (duh, The Villain is HOT!) is somewhat predictable, but nonetheless enjoyable. There were a few points when I wished that Evie would have remembered she had a brain instead of getting so wishy washy over the fact that surely her swooning feelings of love could never be reciprocated, but obviously the author needed to keep the action moving along for a few more chapters.

The twist at the end did give me hope for Evie’s spunkiness and leadership abilities, and leaves room for a sequel.

Assistant to the Villain actually started as a series of TikToks by @hannahnicolemae. After going viral as a BookToker, Hannah Nicole Maehrer penned her debut novel and has the sequel, Apprentice to the Villain, coming out in August 2024, and a third book contracted for 2025.

A Scarlet Death by Elaine Viets

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Angela Richman is a death investigator for Chouteau County, which means she is one of the first called to the scene when a body is found. Angela helps determine if the demise is natural or if foul play is suspected.  When she’s called to the death scene of prominent local citizen Selwyn Skipton, she finds the seventy year old lying on satin sheets in an enormous bed in an apartment decorated with paintings of nude women. Given that the body has a necktie wrapped tightly around its neck and a red A stapled (yes, stapled) to the chest, it’s pretty obvious this is a crime scene.

As Angela and Detective Jace Budewitz try to piece together what happened to the late philanthropist, they discover a secret life which may just have gotten him killed.  Meanwhile, Angela is faced with a real life decision that suddenly becomes more complicated when someone she loves is in danger.

While I had read other books by Elaine Viets, I had not read any others in this series.  I hesitated at starting with the eighth book in the series, but found I had no trouble in immediately getting into both the plot and the characters.  This is a bit darker than my usual cozy mysteries, but while the crime scene descriptions can be a bit graphic they aren’t gratuitous; the reader gets important pieces of the puzzle from the descriptons. I particularly liked seeing how the various professionals work together to process a crime scene.  More than one crime takes place during the book, and I was impressed at the way Viets manages to juggle the different situations.  As a reader, I had no trouble following the individual cases and I found the characters interesting. Angela herself is likeable, but most of all I appreciated her competence and strength. She’s a thorough investigator, tough but not too jaded.

The ending was very satisfying.  I’ll be recommending this series to others, though I will probably have them start at the beginning!

Books in this series are:

Brains Storm

Fire and Ashes

A Star is Dead

Death Grip

Life Without Parole

Late for His Own Funeral

The Dead of Night

A Scarlet Death

Nevermore: My Name is Red, Himself: A Novel, The Covenant of Water

 Reported by Rita

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

A furor erupts when the Sultan hires a group of artists, under the direction of Master Uncle, to illuminate a great book in the European style to celebrate his reign at a time in which all figurative art is considered Islamic heresy, but the situation becomes worse when one of the miniaturists vanishes, in a mystery set against the backdrop of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul.

Could not put it down – immediately reread it.  – DC     5 stars 

Himself: a Novel by Jess Kidd

When he discovers that his mother may not have given him up, but that foul play may have led to her disappearance, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony returns to the rural Irish Village where he was born to find out what really happened 26 years ago and, setting the town on its ear, enlists the help of a brash anarchist and retired theater actress to solve this mystery.

Incredibly clever – loved it.  - MH     4.5 stars

 

The Covenant of Water: a Novel by Abraham Verghese

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, and set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, an epic of love, faith, and medicine follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.

A literary wonder – highly recommend.  – VC     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

1912 Facts about Titanic by Lee W. Merideth

Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past by Sharyn McCrumb

Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas by Jim Minick

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

The Night of the Storm: a Novel by Nishita Parekh

The Speckled Beauty: a Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness by Peter Kuper

The Magic All Around by Jennifer Moorman

 

 

New Books

The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

A Wild and Heavenly Place: a Novel by Robin Oliveira

1001 Dreams: the Complete Book of Dream Interpretations by Cassandra Eason

Bittersweet in the Hollow by Kate Pearsall

Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Dedicated New Yorker Rooney Gao is an artist.  She uses the pseudonym “Red String Girl” for her art because she wants to make a name for herself, not for the fact that she has a famous mother. The name also reflects her use of string in her art, a manifestation of the Chinese legend that everyone has a red string that attaches to their one true love.  For Rooney it means some things are just fated to be.

Enter Jackson Lui, a senior engineer at NASA, who is in New York City to do a presentation which he hopes will help earn him a long sought after promotion.  The two meet up at a print shop, and then again at a party.  Rooney is beginning to wonder if it could be fate, but there’s a small problem or two:

Jack doesn’t believe in fate.

And he lives in California.

Yes, I have now read two romances so far this year, which may be some kind of record for me.  It’s not that I have anything against love, but I do tend to bog down in the overwrought drama that many of those books feature. I get frustrated with the characters because they could usually clear things up with one conversation but it seems to be more fun to wail and fuss.

That’s not the case here.  Rooney and Jack are two adults. They’re attracted to each other from the start and have a magical date. They actually talk about things that matter. I loved (no pun intended) how we got to know the characters, how they discussed their beliefs and respected one another.  I learned a bit about art, about Mars, about chance, about Chinese folklore, and probability, and found two fictional characters that I like a lot.  I enjoyed how the two meet up again, and the way they reconnect.

If more romances were like this one, I’d read more romances.

Mickey: The Cat Who Raised Me by Helen Brown

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

I have been trying to find a way to do a decent review of this book, but it has been a struggle.  Not because I didn’t like it—spoiler alert, I loved it!—but because like many of Helen Brown’s books it isn’t something you can sum up in a quick tag line.  Oh, you could, but to do so would be to miss the depth and nuances which I love and which make all her books instant “must reads” for me. 

Helen is twelve years old in 1966, growing up in a small town in New Zealand.  Her father is an engineer, a champion of using natural gas which is not an easy sell.  Her mother is devoted to theatre and the arts, a mercurial personality who throws herself into preparing for local theatrical productions.  Helen has two older siblings, a sister who has at times been more maternal than her mother, and a brother who is a budding taxidermist. Helen sometimes feels lost and unnoticed.  She doesn’t seem to fit in. She struggles in school, is teased as “Helen the Melon,” and is facing eye surgery.  

Then one day her father takes her to pick up a scraggly kitten, sole survivor of a litter.  Helen names him Mickey but has to hide him from her mother who dislikes cats.  To Helen’s dismay, Mickey seems disinclined to accept her overtures of friendship and instead promises to upend the household.  It’s up to Helen to keep Mickey alive and a secret.

It seems strange to think that a girl in New Zealand would have all that much in common with a girl growing up in Appalachia, but there were so many times that I totally related to what was going on in Helen’s life. While I didn’t see atomic bomb tests on nearby islands, I certainly remember packing sandbags against basement windows and the old atomic signs to show us where to hide in the school in case of nuclear war.  Figuring out who your favorite Beatle was, the benign neglect of parents who let you explore and play without direct supervision, and trying to fit in among your peers is all familiar territory. So many half-forgotten memories appeared as I read this book that I would have to stop and ponder.

While most of her books revolve around a cat—Cleo, Jonah, or Bono, previously—it’s a mistake to dismiss them as “just a cat book.” Not that I have anything against cat books! It’s why I picked up Cleo all those years ago.  But Helen’s books are more than the story of one individual cat; they are mediations on the human experience.

Most of all, Helen Brown has the gift of storytelling, of describing scenes so vividly that the reader can almost see them. She also knows how to find that point of connection between people and make different experiences relatable, and has a delightful sense of humor.  I have always found reading her books to be like talking with an old and dear friend, and this one is no exception.

I now want to go back and re-read her other wonderful books, Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family; Cats and Daughters: They Don’t Always Come When Called; Bono; and her novel, Tumbedown Manor. I know there will be laughter, tears, warmth, and love.

 

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb.

Thought-provoking and deep – full of irony – recommend.  – VC     5 stars

 

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

When she discovers a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, Vera Wong, a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, calls the police but not before tidying the crime scene and deciding she’s going to solve the case herself.

Fun with a twist ending – great book – highly recommend.  – MH     4.5 stars

  

This Impossible Brightness: a Novel by Jessica Bryant Klagmann

Caught in the unexplainable aftermath of one of Violette's deadliest storms, Alma Hughes, as the deaths devastate her new community, uses her unique link to the lost to help those left move on, while confronting a tragic loss of her own to discover the power of hope among the living.

Very strange but very readable. – CW     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

I Could Pee on This, Too: and More Poems by More Cats by Francesco Marciuliano

The River: a Novel by Peter Heller

The Speckled Beauty: a Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

Wings of Fire: the Graphic Novel. Book Six, Moon Rising by Tui Sutherland

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper Wandering

Through Life by Donna Leon

Harvest by Catherine Landis

Prayers the Devil Answers: a novel by Sharyn McCrumb

A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand

Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry

Cruise ship S.O.S.: the Life-Saving Adventures of a Doctor at Sea by Ben MacFarlane

 

New Books

Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place by Bell Hooks

Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson

Moonrise over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden