Nevermore: Read My Pins, Clay's Quilt, Once There Were Wolves, Beartown

 

Reported by Garry

 

Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box by Madeleine Albright. Part illustrated memoir, part social history, Read My Pins provides an intimate look at Albright's world-spanning bureaucratic life through the brooches she wore. Her collection is both international and democratic—dime-store pins share pride of place with designer creations and family heirlooms. Included are the antique eagle purchased to celebrate Albright's appointment as secretary of state, the zebra pin she wore when meeting Nelson Mandela, and the Valentine's Day heart forged by Albright's five-year-old daughter. Read My Pins features more than 200 photographs, along with compelling and often humorous stories about jewelry, global politics, and the life of one of America's most accomplished and fascinating diplomats. Our reader said that this book is “really beautiful” and full of stories that go along with the reasoning of why Albright wore what pins she did and at what times.  KM

 

Clay’s Quilt is the debut novel of now-bestselling author Silas House. Set in the rural hollers of Free Creek, Kentucky, this novel features Clay Sizemore who is a motherless young man in his mid-twenties who falls in love with Alma, a vibrant young woman on the run from an abusive husband. Our reader pointed out that even though Clay is the nominal main character, this novel particularly focusses on the women in his life and their effects on him as well as their struggles. House’s prose is very realistic in its descriptions of the small Eastern Kentucky towns that he set this book along with its two companion books The Coal Tattoo and Parchment of Leaves. House grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and our reader noted how very well developed and believable the characters are in this book.  AH

 

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy is a modern-day murder mystery set in the wilds of the Scotland highlands. Inti Flynn is a biologist who is in charge of reintroducing grey wolves to the Highlands – a task met with skepticism and fear by the local farmers. Inti’s belief that “her” wolves would never hurt a human are put to the test when a local farmer ends up dead in what looks suspiciously like a wolf attack. As Inti joins the investigation, it quickly becomes clear that the man she is falling in love with may also be a prime suspect in the slaying.  BM

 

Beartown by Frederik Backman. Loyalty to friends, duty, and the burden of truth collide in this character study of the people of a slowly dying Nordic town. The Beartown high school hockey team is poised to go to the World Championships when one of the star players rapes a young woman. The ramifications ripple through the town, leaving confusion, distrust, and anger in their wake. Backman, whose book A Man Called Ove is considered a modern classic, brings his trademark wit, insight, and pathos into the mindset of the characters that populate his hockey obsessed small, northern town.  MP

 

Also mentioned:

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama

Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father by Sally Cabot Gunning

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Azimov and Robert Silverberg

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Lightness of Water and Other Stories by Rhonda Browning White

Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings by Kenneth R. Ginsburg

2018 World Almanac edited by Sarah Janssen

The Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart

The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls edited by Jessica Spotswood

In The Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians by Jake Page

Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

 

New Books:

Our Best Intentions by Vibhuti Jain

Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

Tremors in the Blood:  Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector by Amit Katwala

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence by David Waldstreicher

Nevermore: Lost Roses, Witchfinder, Things in Jars, Red Coat, Read My Pins, Arguing with Zombies, Mountain Empire Memories

Reported by Kristin

Nevermore began with a flurry of book pages and notes from e-readers. First up was Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly. A generation before Caroline, the heroine of the earlier bestselling novel Lilac Girls, Caroline’s mother Eliza Ferriday proved herself an adventuresome young woman travelling through eastern Europe into Russia with Romanov cousin Sofya Streshnayva in 1914. Our reader said that the phenomenal descriptions made her feel as if she were right there amid the splendor of the pre-Russian revolution excesses, all while the common people were starving outside. This historical novel portrays the great and brutal inequalities which fomented the rebellion to come.

Our next reader was happy to have picked up a 50 cent book from the Bristol Public Library gift shop: The Witchfinder by Loren Estleman. Twelfth in the Amos Walker Private Investigator series, this outing takes the Detroit detective on a fact finding mission fueled by revenge. Jay Furlong is dying and he wants to know who destroyed his relationship with a young woman architect eight years ago. Our reader is only part way through, but is getting full value and enjoyment from her bargain book.

Next up in fiction was The Red Coat by Dolley Carlson. Set in Boston during the years surrounding the Second World War, this novel reveals the joy and the pain felt by both high society and working class families. A donated red coat is passed from mother to daughter. Our reader found this to be a sweet little book, and enjoyed it very much.

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd was quite a jarring departure from other fiction discussed, but one that fascinated our readers. In Victorian London Bridie Devine is a most unusual creature, a female detective set with the task of finding a kidnapped young girl. The girl isn’t just anyone, she’s a secret daughter of someone quite famous, and she may have slightly more than natural powers. Our reader predicts that this will turn into a #1 bestseller.

Turning to non-fiction, another reader enjoyed Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box by Madeleine Albright, which tells so much more of the former Secretary of State’s life than just her fashion accessories. Our Nevermore member found it to be a quick read, especially since she skimmed over the details of the pins that Albright was so famous for wearing.

The next book was non-fiction as well, even strangely titled—Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman. This Nobel Prize winner has decades of experience in the national arena and explains that the “zombies” are misunderstandings that just won’t die and are continually recirculated as gospel truths. Kruger draws together many of the issues that he has covered in his popular New York Times column in this uniquely named volume.

Finally, another reader picked up and enjoyed a newly published work on local history, Mountain Empire Memories: A Photographic History of the Early Years by the staff of the Bristol Herald Courier. Putting together photos from the Museum of the Middle Appalachians, the William King Museum of Art, the Bristol Historical Association, and the Sullivan County Department of Archives and Tourism, this coffee-table book is a really interesting browsing book. Our reader noted that if you are from this area of southwest Virginia or northeast Tennessee, this book will take you on a walk down memory lane as you recognize places from past decades.