The Sunday Philosophy Club

 

By Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel and a companion are at a concert when they see a young man fall to his death from the upper deck of the hall. 

Witnessing a tragedy like that leads Isabel into a an investigation of the man and what may have led to his death and whether it was an accident or something else.

Being a woman of wealth and means, Isabel has the time to undertake such an investigation. Her friends don't think it is a good idea, but she ignores their advice. Her inquiries lead her to conclude that the dead did not fall, that there were reasons he might have been pushed, mainly insider trading. His position at the firm where he worked may have led him to suspect that people in the business were using inside information to take advantage of the markets.

Was this why he died? Or was it a romantic entanglement? Or perhaps it truly was just that he lost his balance and fell? Isabel stirs things up and finds more than one villain. And her own life may be in danger as a consequence.

This was an OK mystery story. The evildoers are unmasked but oddly no one is brought to justice, which made for a rather weak ending, I think.

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

 

By Christopher Moore

Tuck is a jet pilot who kills his career when he gets loaded and crashes the company jet while having sex with a prostitute. Desperate for work, Tuck takes a job as a pilot for a Pacific island-based medical charity.

The charity is run by a doctor and his nurse/wife. But it doesn't take Tuck long to figure out that these two are up to something unsavory. Like how can a small, local charity afford a Learjet? What is in the coolers that they transport via the jet to Japan? Something that is so special that the wife guards it with a gun.

Eventually Tuck figures out that the two Westerners are taking advantage of the natives' cargo cult and are using it to bamboozle the islanders into becoming organ donors and that the people don't really understand how they are being used. It all comes to a head for Tuck when he realizes the doctor removed the corneas of a little boy for transport to Japan and they justified it to him by claiming the boy was already blind and didn't need his corneas. He also realizes it is up to him to put a stop to their organ-harvesting operation.

This was a very amusing story and it has lots of funny moments. For example, two native men are talking about a People Magazine and what the one who could read is sharing from it:

"'But look!" Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears, "This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted."

Sarapul scrunched up his face . . . while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, "I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then."

"You have never been a tampon," Malink stated, although he couldn't be sure. "Only a king may be a tampon."'

This too, when Tuck gets grabbed by the locals and tied up:

'The native said something in his own language, which Tuck took to be "Cut him down," because a second later he found himself falling into the arms of four strong islanders who lowered him to the ground.

Tucker's arms and legs burned as the blood rushed back into them. Above him he saw a circle of moonlit brown faces. He managed to grab enough breath to squeak, "Soon as I'm on my feet, your asses are mine. You all might as well just go practice falling down for a while so you'll be used to it. Just order the body bags now 'cause when I'm done, you're going to look like piles of chocolate pudding. They'll be cleaning you up with shovels—you . . . " Tuck's breath caught in his throat and he passed out.

"Malink looked at his old friend Favo and smiled. "Excellent threat," he said.

"Most excellent threat," Favo said.

Sarapul pushed his way through the kneeling men. "He's dead. Let's eat him."

"He no like that," Kimi said. "Not even for free."'

And here, a reporter is musing on his job:

'The notes read: "They caught the pig thief. Now what?"

You could run down leads, pound the pavement, check all your facts with two sources, then structure your meticulously gathered information into the inverted pyramid form and what you got was: The pig's owner had gotten drunk and beat up his wife, so she sold his pig to someone on the outer islands and bought a used stun gun . . .  The next time her husband got rough, a group of Japanese tourists found him by the side of the road, sizzling in the dirt like a strip of frying bacon. Mistaking him for a street performer, the tourists clapped joyously, took pictures of each other standing beside the electrocuted man, and gave his wife five dollars. The whole intrigue had been exposed when police found the pig-stealing wife in front of the Continental Hotel charging tourists a dollar apiece to watch her zap her husband's twitching supine body. The stun gun was confiscated, no charges were pressed, and the wife beater was pronounced unharmed by a Peace Corps volunteer, although he did need to be reminded several times of his name, where he lived, and how many children he had.'

 It's a funny story, even if the subject matter is rather horrible and very sad.

Here is a review of the story by Kirkus Reviews. 

Take a Bow, B.C.

 

By Johnny Hart

Copyright for this book is 1966 and 1967. In this collection we meet Grog, the prehistoric man, who is basically a head on legs. And also the apteryx (aka a kiwi bird) both of which are fun additions to the comic strip.

Swine Not?

 

By Jimmy Buffett

Rumpy is a pot-bellied pig that is originally from the New York City area. But she moved away when her humans moved away too. Now she is back in NYC, living on the roof of a posh hotel with Ellie, the mom and Ellie's two kids, Barley and Maple. Ellie is a pastry chef at the hotel and their accomdation was supplied by the hotel, the apartment on the hotel's roof.

The problem is that the hotel does not permit exotic pets, like pot-bellied pigs. So Rumpy has to be smuggled in to the rooftop apartment and out for walks and exercise. This chore is left mainly to the two kids, Barley and Maple. They figured out a way to sneak the pig in and out by hiding her in a room service trolley.

What no one in Rumpy's human family knows is that Rumpy is a pig on a mission. She wants to find her twin brother, Lukie, with whom she lost contact when she moved with her family away from NYC. Fortunately, she has made contact with a squadron of pigeons, the Pigilantes, who patrol the skies above the local environs and who know everything worth knowing about the area.

I don't know how I ended up with this book. It became quite obvious that this is meant for kids. I expect they would find it funny and exciting and interesting. I found it boring. Oddly, Google's AI says the book was intended for general audiences. I don't really understand how that could be. It's not even slightly funny.

B.C. Big Wheel

 

By Johnny Hart

The copyright dates from 1963 and 1964. This collection features the usual gang and their lives in the beginning of time with modern times popping in unexpectedly through golf and baseball and hotels and a snakeskin marked as made in Japan. We also find out that the turtle's name is John. Named after the author? Time marches on but the comic strips remains just as funny as when it first started out.

The Rivals

 

By Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A play in five acts. This edition comes with a Preface, by the author, and two Prologues and an Epilogue. It was Sheridan's first play, staged in 1775.

The main characters are Lydia Languish and Captain Absolute, aka Ensign Beverly. Second in importance are Julia, Lydia's cousin, and Faulkland, Captain Absolute's friend.

Captain Absolute is in love with Lydia. But apparently Lydia has a romantic fantasy of an illict lover and subsequent elopement. Catering to her fantasy, Captain Absolute becomes Ensign Beverly, a young man of little means and wholely unacceptable to her family and with the promise of defiance to Julia's family and an exciting elopement. 

Meanwhile, there is Lydia's cousin, Julia, who is engaged to be married to Faulkland. However, Faulkland seems to be unable to accept that Julia truly loves him and is constantly testing her love to see if it is genuine. Which ultimately leads to romantic disaster.

Back to the Captain, disguised as Beverly, who finds his romantic pursuit blows up in his face when Lydia learns he is not a penniless nobody, but a man of wealth and of good family. All her silly dreams of a runaway marriage dissolve and she is left feeling duped and resentful.

Throw in a couple duels, a cowardly country rube and an unreasonably angry Irishman, and a couple of confounded parental types, and you have a screwball comedy that was probably considered hilarious in its day. I watched a stage performance of the play on YouTube and the laughs were few and far between. Mildly amusing at the most.

Middlegame

 

By Seanan McGuire

A. Deborah Baker was probably the world's most skilled modern alchemist. So skilled she manufactured a human being of her own, James Reed. Reed was also a greatly skilled alchemist which is something his peers should have kept in mind. But just like they did with Baker, treating her as inferior simply because she was a woman, they also acknowledged Reed's skills but did not give him the respect he craved. For this error, they would pay for their lives in one fell swoop.

Reed was an ambitious creature and he wanted to rule the Universe by bringing about the Impossible City. Once this was accomplished, he would have the powers of an actual god. But since Reed was a cruel monster, this would be horrendous for everyone and everything else.

Reed had a plan. If he could embody the Doctrine of Ethos in human form, this would trigger the Impossible City. [I wish I could explain this idea better, but frankly it is way beyond my ability to even understand what the author was on about.] Reed did this by making lab grown twin babies who, as they matured, would come together and [ I didn't comprehend that part either] become the Doctrine of Ethos. [I never figured out what the Doctrine of Ethos was.] 

There were lots of failures. But finally Reed has two sets of twins who seemed to be shaping up to attain success manifesting the Doctrine. The oldest set was headed down the right track, but there were also problems. The younger set of twins was Reed's backup plan if the first set crashed and burned.

So the plan required that the twins be kept separate until maturity. So one twin was fostered on the East Coast of the US and the other twin on the West Coast. But distance was not enough to keep the kids apart and they found each other, psychically. The male twin, Roger, was a whiz at words. The female twin, Dodger, was a whiz at math.

Meanwhile, Reed and his chief minion, Leigh, the bloodthirsty witch, were busy making life hard for the younger set of twins and for anyone else who happened to be in their orbit. These two villains are just about as nasty as is possible to be. 

By the time Roger and Dodger are college age, Reed has decided they will not do and he sends his minions to murder them. But one of the minions is not loyal and she helps Roger and Dodger escape. Leigh, the witch, hunts them down and the battle ensues.

This book was way too long. And it required a suspension of belief of which I was not capable. I never got the Doctine of Ethos thing figured out or why it's achievement would create godlike beings of the twins or why once they reached their godhood they would pay any attention to the crazed desires of those two lunatic monsters, Reed and Leigh. 

Most of the book is about Roger and Dodger growing up and finding each other and discovering their special connection. On and on it went, it got really boring. And the evil machinations of Reed and Leigh in the background also went on and on.

But towards the end, it was like reading a video game, where the two hero twins have to face the final bosses. Meh. I don't like those kind of video games. The closer I got to the end, the more I just skipped so much wordage, just wanting it over. Frankly, if I hadn't spent almost $30 for the book, I probably would have just quit halfway, 250 pages in.

However, it seems lots of readers really like the book. So I will call it a good read. I just think I was not brainy enough to enjoy it. Maybe it should have a warning, like You Must Have a High IQ to Understand this Novel.

Here is a review by Kirkus.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

 

By Jeanette Waterson

An novel, even though the main character is also named Jeanette and her and the author were both adopted by religious fanatics. So that's something.

Anyway, fictional Jeanette is adopted by Christian fundamentalists. Well, actually the mother is the religious nutter. The father is a nonentity in the story. The mother, Louie, is quite devoted to her religion and her adopted daughter is being raised in the faith too. No problem, the daughter is nearly as gung-ho as the mother. That is until love enters the picture, in the form of another girl.

So Jeanette's first love is a girl and so is her second love and her third love and so on. Which is ok until Louie finds out and blabs everything to the church she is devoted to. And the churchy people decide Jeanette is possessed by the devil and needs an exorcism. Jeanette doesn't respond well to the exorcism and becomes quite ill. 

When she recovers, it soon become apparent that the exorcism was a failure because Jeanette is still falling in loves with girls. Eventually her sexual preference results in not only being kicked out of their little church but out of the only home she has ever known. Now nearly grown, she has to find work and make her own way in the world without the love and support of her adoptive parents. 

This supposedly comic novel, per the blurbs on the cover ("[Waterson] has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel." "A daring, unconventional comic novel . . . told with romping humor" "quirky and subtle hilarity of Winterson's autobiographical first novel") was boring and not what I would call comical or subtly hilarious. And it is interspersed with some weird fantasy stuff that was puzzling and I supposed was an allegory for the character's feelings or life or whatever, but I didn't care for those intrusions into the story. 

But apparently the literary world loves this novel, so what do I know? Nothing, most likely.

This is not a review but is a distillation by John Crace (Digested Classics it's called) from The Guardian. It pretty much covers the main points and I get the feeling he didn't really care much for the fantasy bits either.

Rogue Protocol

 

By Martha Wells

Third book in the Murderbot Diaries.

Rin is headed off to a terraforming facility orbiting a planet as a leg in its search to gather more information about the evil corporation GrayCris that was behind the deaths in the first book, All Systems Red, boarding a ship as a stowaway. The ship contains a small group of humans and their humanoid pet bot Miki. The humans have been hired to inspect the terraforming facility before the new owners take possession. 

But, once again, Rin finds itself having to defend a bunch of hapless humans incapable of defending themselves, especially when it becomes clear that the two security people they hired are working with the attackers. Rin again questions itself about why it keeps getting involved with defenseless humans.

I think one of the best things about this series, other than the main character, is that the books are not 300 or 400 pages long. This one is only 158 pages long. I enjoy reading books but these modern books are just too full of excessive details. I really feel most novels today could use serious trimming. It is so nice to sit down to read a book you know you can finish reading in a day or two. 

But besides the convenient length of the book, is Rin. Once again Rin is smack in the middle of a huge mess and not only manages to extricate itself, it also saves the humans involved. And learns a lesson about the itself too, in the form of the pet bot, Miki. Just an exciting and touching story, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, Exit Strategy.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the novel.

The Long Walk

 

By Slavomir Rawicz

The story of several prisoners in Russian work camps during World War II who managed to escape and walk all the way from Siberia to India. They were helped by the wife of camp commander. This woman (my opinion) may have had a grudge against the ruling communist regime of the time for sending her husband run a prison camp so far from civilization. 

Despite her help and their considerable abilities to fend for themselves, not all of them survived to reach freedom though. Of course walking through Siberia in the wintertime was not easy but they were actually pretty well dressed, having pilfered furs from the stocks of the prison camp. But worse than Siberia was crossing the Gobi desert because not only did they face hunger, they also faced the lack of water sources and they failed to bring containers beyond each person's canteen to carry extra water. Plus, by the time they were in the desert, it was in the summer and daytime heat was extreme. They lost two people to kidney failure from lack of water. Then, traveling through the mountains, they lost one man to a fall. But they did eventually reach India and safety.

According to most sources, this tale is fiction. One thing that makes me think it is fiction is that the group of escapees encountered a beautiful teenage girl who was also on the run and she joined them on the trek only to die in the desert. This seemed to me to be a character added to the story to make it more appealing to a wider audience. Also, according to records from that time, Rawicz was released  from the Russian prison in 1942, he wasn't an escapee.

But whether true or fabricated, it's still an interesting story. Of course, it loses a lot of its drama if it is fiction, though. 

Our Share of Night

 

By Mariana Enriquez

Translated by Megan McDowell

This really isn't going to be a review but a reminder to myself to not ever get this book again. Fine words are spoken about it that may fool me again, just like they did this time. 

So, I didn't care for it from the very beginning. It just wasn't interesting. Plus there was too much untranslated Spanish in it. But mainly I put it down after I read the passage where the person I think is the main character, Juan, abuses his young son:

"Juan got up and said, Do as I say, go, right now, and when Gaspar refused again, sniffling with his arms crossed, Juan slapped him on the cheek with his open palm, a blow that swung Gaspar's face around, making him wobble on the stool and finally lose his balance. He fell and landed on his side with a dry thump, and the stool also toppled to the floor, barely missing him. Juan went over to him and yanked him roughly up, ignoring his cries, and saw the red mark on his cheek and his swollen lip. The pang of regret disappeared as soon as Gaspar started to cry. Stop it, he said. He grabbed his son's hair and forced him to meet his eyes, straining his neck backward. He shook the boy's head, and felt the soft, sweaty hair get tangled in his fingers. Don't be weak, nothing happened. Gaspar tried to say something: the chair, the slap; Juan raised his hand threateningly again, and the boy stopped crying. Go get changed, he repeated, and don't make me tell you again."

So when I read that, I thought, fuck you, Juan. And I decided I didn't give a shit about Juan and whatever happened to him. And I gave the book away. I didn't rate it a bad read because I didn't read it and the consensus seems to be that it is a good read.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the novel.