First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half of Century of Silence; Becky Cooper

 

Welcome to First Chapter/Intros, now hosted by Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews. Each week readers post the first paragraph (or 2) of a book they are reading or that they plan to read soon.

      We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half of Century of Silence; Becky Cooper                                                               Grand Central Publishing - 2020

Part One

The Story

MORNING OF GENERALS

"IT WAS THE WARMEST IT had been in more than a week, but Bostonians turning on their morning radio broadcast woke up to gale warnings along the coast.  In Cambridge, across the Charles River, the day was equally grim. A wintery mix of fog and rain and snow hung over the city, and the streets of Harvard Square were quiet.

A delivery person piled stacks of that day's Harvard Crimson inside the undergraduate houses.  The front page was a black-and-white picture of a girl curled up in fetal position on the floor of one of the campus libraries.  Her head was propped on a book. Her feet were bare.  She had on jeans and a sweater and looked more like a body than a person.  The caption read, There was a girl who fell asleep on her book and dreamed, and there was the boy who dreamed of the girl asleep on her book, and...Don't let the times get you down."

I wanted to read a non-fiction and this one has been on my shelves since late last year, it's almost 500 pages with sources etc. but I'm half way through and really liking it so far.  

What do you think, read more or pass?

Book Review - Migrations; Charlotte McConaghy

 

TITLE/AUTHOR: Migrations; Charlotte McConaghy

PUBLISHER:  MacMillan Audio (narrator: Barrie Kreinik - very good)

YEAR PUBLISHED:  2020

GENRE: Fiction 

FORMAT:  audio PP/LENGTH: 8 hours 48 min.

SOURCE:  Library

SETTING(s):  Greenland, Ireland, Australia

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:  A haunting story about the places one will go and the things one will do in the name of love.

BRIEF REVIEW: Franny Stone is a mysterious woman who has always loved rare birds. She is also a woman who has been unable to stay in one place for very long.  As the novel opens Franny is in Greenland determined to follow the plight of Arctic terns. She fears this may be the birds last migration to Antartica before becoming extinct.  Franny convinces Ennis, a fishing captain of the Saghani to make this journey by telling him that following the terns it will also lead him to some much needed good fishing as well.  Who is the mysterious Franny and why is she so obsessed with making this journey?

Although the timeline is somewhat vague the novel seems to take place somewhere in the near future where global warming is affecting everything around us an animals are on the brink of extinction.  The chapters alternate between the past and present. Initially, I found Franny hard to warm up to or even care about for that matter. She is wild, unreliable and unpredictable and like her birds prone to take flight.  It was only as her dark haunting past is revealed that I could begin to understand her root of her torment, her restlessness and her need to be free.  We learn about her marriage to Niall, an older professor, which was especially moving.  I thought the story was quite creative and the writing very good. I liked the mystery behind Franny. and the way it unraveled.  I especially liked that Migrations reminds us of all the endangered creatures and places that are being threatened by climate change. Highly Recommended.

RATING: 5 stars

MEMORABLE QUOTES: "We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair.  But it's precious, and maybe it's enough, and maybe it's right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it's right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful."

Book Review - Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death; Caitlin Doughty

 

TITLE/AUTHOR:  Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death; Caitlin Doughty

PUBLISHER: W.W. Norton

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2019

GENRE:  Non Fiction / Self Help

FORMAT:  PP/LENGTH: 222 pp.

SOURCE:  Library

SETTING(s):  n/a

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:  A mortician answers kids questions about death and dead bodies,  some serious and some strange.

BRIEF REVIEW:  Caitlin Doughty is a mortician who has written several books on the topic of death. One of her books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was one I read previously and felt was really well done.  Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs? ,  is question #1 in this book of 33 questions about death. Here are a few of the other curious and sometimes quirky questions children have asked: #8, How Does a Whole Body Fit into a Tiny Box After Cremation?, #15, What if they Make a Mistake and Bury Me When I'm Just in a Coma? #16, What Would Happen If I Died on a Plane?, #20, Can Everyone Fit into a Casket, What if They are Really Tall? #23, What Happens When a Cemetery is Full of Bodies and You Can't Add Any More?, #24, Is it True Once People See a White Light They are Dying?  #27, Can You Describe the Smell of a Dead Body? #28 What Happens to Soldiers who Die Far Away in Battle and Their Bodies are Never Found? #29, Can I Be Buried in the Same Grave as My Hamster (or pet)? #33, At Grandma's Wake She was Wrapped in Plastic Under Her Blouse, Why Would They Do That?

Each question posed has an interesting illustration on one page (done by Dianne Ruz) as well as a detailed answer to each question on the page(s) which follows.  Personally, I found most of the questions in this book to be quite interesting but, I couldn't imagine sharing the book or reading it to or with a child under the age of 12.  There is a lot of information to process about death and what happens to the body when we die along. There is also a good amount of scientific information making this much more appropriate for mature teens and adults.  I thought the answers, infused with humor at times,  were mostly informative, concise and respectful.  Definitely not a book for everyone but, I was happy to have read it.

RATING: 4/5 stars

Book Review - Good Morning Zoom; Lindsay Rechler (Ill. June Park)

A pandemic parody on the children's book,  Goodnight Moon, Good Morning Zoom was a story about the day in the life of what happens in many homes during the pandemic: Zoom classrooms, iPads, pillow forts and talking with grandparents while social distancing. Although a cute pandemic keepsake, I think I was expecting a bit more. I did like that it gave a bit of hope our life after quarantine.

I checked out this book in both print and on audio (the audio was 5 minutes long and narrated by Donna Lynne Champlin).  The audio was sent to me via the publisher (Listening Library) in exchange for my unbiased review.

RATING - 3/5 stars

Book Review - We Run the Tides, Vendela Vida

 

TITLE/AUTHOR: We Run the Tides; Vendela Vida

PUBLISHER:  Ecco

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2021

GENRE: Fiction 

FORMAT:  eGalley PP/LENGTH: 268 pp.

SOURCE: Edelweiss (sent to me in exchange for my unbiased review)

SETTING(s): California

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:  Girls will be girls, in this coming of age story set in 1984 San Francisco.

BRIEF REVIEW:  It's 1984 in the oceanside town of Sea Cliff, with beautiful views of the Golden Gate bridge. It's the place where 13 year old Eulabee lives with her parents. She and her best friend, Maria Fabiola, a larger than life character, with that magnetic personality pal around along with other friends Faith and Julia.  The girls are in the eighth grade at a private all-girls school. Separately the girls are good students and good daughters but, when they get together, they resort to telling half-truths to parents and teachers and are involved in typical teenage antics.

One day there is an incident with a stranger, a man in a white car and, a difference of opinion as to what transpired on that day, causes Eulabee to be rejected by the other girls.  It is around the same time that there is speculation that a kidnapper might be targeting young teens when one of the girls disappears and someone else has seemed to vanish as well.

Part mystery, part coming of age story, this was a story that moved along at a nice pace.  I tend to enjoy coming of age stories and this one added a bit of nostalgia, bringing back memories of myself and my friends around that age - boys, music, "Sun In" sprayed to lighten our hair color and times spent at the beach. No matter where you lived as a teen, this one is sure to make most women flash back to those carefree days of yesterday. I liked that the author ended the book in 2019 with an update on where the girls were now as adults.  In 2009 I read another book by this author which I recall enjoying a lot as well, it was called: Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.

RATING:  4/5 stars

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Caitlin Doughty

Welcome to First Chapter/Intros, now hosted by Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews. Each week readers post the first paragraph (or 2) of a book they are reading or that they plan to read soon.

                                 Will the Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions From Tiny Mortals About Death

                                                      Caitlin Doughty - WW Norton - 2019

When I die, will the cat eat my eyeballs?

"No, your cat won't eat you eyeballs. Not right away, at least.

Don't worry, Snickers McMuffin hasn't been biding his time, glaring at you from behind the couch, waiting for you to take your last breath to be all, "Spartans! Tonight, we dine in hell!"

For hours, even days, after your death, Snickers will expect you to rise from the dead and fill his normal food bowl with his normal food.  He won't be diving straight for the human flesh. But a cat has got to eat, and you are the person who feeds him. This is the cat-human compact.  Death doesn't free you from performing your contractual obligations.  If you have a heart attack in your living room and no one finds you before you miss your coffee date with Sheila next Thursday, a hungry and impatient Snickers McMuffin may abandon his empty food bowl and come check out what your corpse has to offer.

I was a huge fan of mortician, Caitlin Doughty's first book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes so when I read she had a couple other books, I wanted to give them a try. I started this one yesterday and it's so very interesting but funny at times as well.  There are 33 short chapters all beginning with a fun illustration and a question that has been asked about death by children.

What do you think? Read more or pass?

January 2021 in Review

 

What a cold, windy month with some white stuff as well. We were able to walk most days the first 3 weeks despite the cold but, the last 10 days have been windy and very cold.  Good reading weather though so not all bad.  I cut out desserts this month as well as most processed foods and managed to lose 5 pounds so I think I'm on to something here. Hoping long term this will help my knee.

READING: I felt my reading choices for January made me happy for the most part with just a couple so so books.

I read (14) books and had (2) DNF.

(3) children's books

(11) Fiction

(0) Non Fiction

(6) print books - (4) from my shelves and (2) from library

(3) audio books - (2) from library and (1) publisher download

(5) eBooks/eGalleys - (4) publisher downloads (1) library download

(11) female authors

(3) male authors

Places traveled through the books I've read:  United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Kentucky, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Alabama

                                                                         Favorite Books 

1. Sleepless Nights; Elizabeth Hardwick (4.5/5) Settings: KY, NY, Maine, CT and Europe (Jan)
2. Those People; Louise Candlish (3.5/5) Setting: South London, U.K.
3. Fifty Words for Rain; Asha Lemmie (4/5) Setting: Japan
4. Monogamy; Sue Miller (5/5) Setting: MA and VT
5. My Grandmother's Braid; Alina Bronsky (4.5/5) Setting: Germany
6. Brood; Jackie Polzin (3/5) Setting: Minnesota
7. The Push; Ashley Audrain (4.5/5) Setting: unspecified
8. Over the Shop; JonArno Lawson (4/5)
9. So You Want to Be an Owl; Jane Porter - (5/5)
10. Miss Mingo and the 100th Day of School; Jamie Harper (5/5)
11. The Children's Blizzard; Melanie Benjamin - (3.5/5) Setting: NB, ND
12. Every Vow You Break; Peter Swanson - 2.5/5 Setting: mostly Maine
13. Transcendent Kingdom; Yaa Gyassi (5/5) Setting: AL
14. The Midnight Library; Matt Haig - (3/5) Setting: England (Jan)

DNF (Because Life is Too Short to Read a Bad Book)

1. Night Boat to Tangier; Kevin Barry - January
2. Pretty Things; Janelle Brown - January 

How was January for you?