Reported by Kristin
Nevermore began with a humorous debut book, The Big Finish
by Brooke Fossey. (Previously reviewed by Laura here.)
Duffy Sinclair and Carl Upton are roommates, but they are not rowdy college
freshmen, they are senior citizens in an assisted living facility. When a young
woman crawls in their window one night and announces that Carl is her grandpa,
the octogenarian men do their best to keep her a secret, and not get kicked out
of their comfortable living situation. Their escapades are funny, endearing,
and make for an excellent novel.
Our next reader found Defying Hitler by Sebastian
Haffner to be an insightful memoir of the author’s eyewitness account of German
power changes from 1907-1933. Written in 1939 and published more than sixty
years later, this history details how the rise of the Nazi party was gradual as
they took power a little at a time. Our reader appreciated that the author’s
son chose to publish his father’s writing in 2000, and she found it well worth
reading.
Another book of historic writing came to the virtual table
with The Secret Service: The Field, The Dungeon, and The Escape by
Albert D. Richardson. This memoir was written in 1865 by a journalist who
examined the crumbling infrastructure of the South in the years leading up to
and during the Civil War. Our reader was intrigued by the extensive vocabulary
used by the author and highly recommends this volume for anyone who fancies
themselves an amateur historian.
Before she wrote her debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing,
Delia Owens and her then-husband Mark Owens wrote memoirs of their time
studying African wildlife. Cry of the Kalahari has been passed around
between several Nevermore members, enchanting readers with the beautiful
descriptions of the animals and the landscape. Although the Owens family was
subsisting on very few resources, they were able to observe brown hyenas and
other wildlife in such remote areas that the animals had not yet learned to be
afraid of humans. Our current reader was impressed by the authors’ sensitivity
to the animals and charmed by the photography.
Another reader was working through another Owens book, Secrets
of the Savanna: Twenty-Three Years in the African Wilderness Unraveling the
Mysteries of Elephants and People. Set in Zambia, the zoologists lived and
worked in the Luangwa Valley, studying the devastation faced by the elephant
population as poachers decimated their numbers. Our reader particularly noted
that when the elder male elephants were killed, much of the herd’s collective
survival knowledge was lost.
