Nevermore: Geiger, Ten Steps to Nanette, Cross Country, Monsoon Mansion

 

Nevermore August 16, 2022

Reported by Garry

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman is a thriller all the way according to our reader. Agneta is a happily married Swedish grandmother who answers the phone and hears the word “Geiger”. Setting down the phone, she retrieves a silenced pistol from her drawer, kills her husband, and then vanishes. Sara Nowak is a detective who grew up knowing Agneta’s family and now takes on the investigation, one that will upturn everything she knew about the family and unlock secrets buried for over forty years.  ML

Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby is the intensely funny memoir by the Tasmanian stand-up comic, and it packs a gut-punch. Gadsby is gay, has ADHD, and is on the autism spectrum. Our reader says that this book was absolutely fascinating in that it allowed her to get into Gadsby’s mind and see the way she puts the world together – an experience she has never before had in her many years of dealing with people on the spectrum.  NH

Cross Country by James Patterson is so engrossing it is a “burn the chicken” book according to our reader. The 14^th book in the Alex Cross series by Patterson, this thriller finds Alex investigating the gruesome deaths of an ex-girlfriend and her family in an upscale Washington suburb. Quickly becoming entangled in the brutal Nigerian underworld of D.C., Alex realizes he has to go to Africa to track down the powerful and diabolical “Tiger”, a warlord who employs an army of children to do his bidding. Fast paced and riveting, our reader definitely recommends this book for a thrilling, escapist read.  MS

Monsoon Mansion is a rags-to-riches-to-rags memoir by Cinelle Barnes, who grew up in the Philippines. When she was three, Barnes’ family moved into the Mansion Royale, a sprawling, decadent ten-room home in the Philippines. A few years later, a monsoon devastated large swaths of the country, Barnes’ father’s business collapsed, and he disappeared. Her mother’s lover took the reins of the family and tyranny descended, turning Barnes’ fairy-tale childhood into a nightmare. This tale of survival, told with grace and heart, really grabbed at our reader who praised Barnes’ honesty and extraordinary writing style.  CD

Also Mentioned: 

“Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination by Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott

Who Was That Masked Woman? by Noretta Koertge

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra

For Simon: A Journey into Truth and Reconciliation by Molly Walling

Switchboard Soldiers by Jennifer Chiaverini

Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton

The Girl in Duluth by Sigrid Brown

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown

Spiders of North America by Sarah Rose

The Woman’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan

Trashlands by Alison Stine

So You Want to Start a Podcast: Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story, and Building a Community That Will Listen by Kristen Meinzer

Nevermore: Deadliest Enemy, Long Hello, W. Kamau Bell, Stars of Alabama, History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Ghosts of Harvard, Wind Done Gone

 

Our first book was the timely Deadliest Enemy by Michael T. Osterholm. Our reader highly recommends this non-fiction book, in which the author both predicts a pandemic and outlines a prescription for how to handle it. Osterholm especially notes a pandemic can’t be controlled unless we have a vaccine. This book was released in May 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The author points out that previous pandemic viruses including SARS, MERS, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are still with us and that we should never forget them. He goes on to talk about antibiotic resistant organisms and how they are so very dangerous – they are ticking biological bombs.  One example he points out are the microbial mats on the walls of Carlsbad Caverns - the bacteria sampled from the walls are already resistant to penicillin and synthetic antibiotics even though they have never been directly exposed to synthetic antibiotics.

 

Our next reader read three books that left her unsatisfied. First, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian, which she thought was a very good book, but a bit over her head as she couldn’t totally identify with it but liked anyway. Next on her reading list was The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me by Cathie Borrie, a memoir about the author’s mother dying with Alzheimer’s disease. Our reader thought this book was just okay, and that there other books that are better. Last was a parody of the classic Gone With the Wind, entitled The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall, told from the perspective of Cynara, the mulatto half-sister of Scarlett, who she just called “the other.” Our reader found it just silly and felt it was a waste of her time.

 

Next up was The Stars of Alabama by Sean Dietrich. This novel begins during the Depression with Marigold, a 15 year old girl who has a baby by her father. Rejected by her family, she leaves home to fend for herself. One day she hides the baby in the woods in order to go find food, and somebody else finds and takes the seemingly abandoned baby. Our reader said that she enjoyed this book, but it was not a favorite.

Our next book club member picked up A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes. These eleven (or ten and a half) seemingly unconnected stories have an interconnecting thread that becomes apparent as the book goes on. This book surprised our reader and was not what she had expected when she picked it up, but she called it well worth reading.

 

One staff recommendation this week was Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella. Cady Archer is a freshman at Harvard, despite the fact that her mother strongly disapproved of her college choice.  Cady’s older brother Eric struggled with mental illness for years, and had committed suicide at Harvard only the year before. As Cady struggles to adapt to the stresses of college academics and social interactions, she starts to hear voices – just as Eric had.