1327 - 1330 (2026 #37 - #40). August 2026

The Windsor Affair by Melanie Benjamin

I knew the basic story about King Edward VIII of England giving up his throne for "the woman I love," twice-divorced American Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson.  And of course I knew of the "Queen Mum", Queen Elizabeth II's mother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, although I didn't know much about her, other than she was married to George V, Edward's younger brother, who became king upon the elder's abdication - and I didn't know much about him, either.  I haven't seen The Crown series nor The King's Speech movie.  I had no idea there was such a rivalry between the two women.

This book revolves around those four main characters, much of it told from Wallis' and Elizabeth's alternating points of view.  It covers their early years (they were all born between 1895 and 1900) up to 1976.  I learned a lot about them (and about English history in the same time period), but I found all four characters to be either weak (the men) or extremely catty (the women).  In other words, they were all pretty unlikeable.  Nevertheless, I'm glad I read the book.  I won a hardbound, dust-jacketed copy in a Goodreads Giveaway, and I'll pass the book on to a friend or donate it to a library.

The Odyssey by Homer, translation by Samuel Butler

After seeing the Christopher Nolan movie adaptation and reading Gareth Hinds' graphic novel version of this classic last month, I wanted to read a "complete" version.  This was one of the translations recommended by Hinds.  In this edition of Samuel Butler’s translation, the names of the gods and characters have been restored from Latin to the original Greek - which is appropriate.  After reading it (there is LOTS of repetition), I decided to cancel all the other holds I had placed on this book.  Twice is enough.  

Good Families Don't by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Joy Ang

Most everyone is familiar with Robert Munsch, author of the classic picture book Love You Forever.  This is a re-release of one of his titles originally published in 1990, with new artwork by Joy Ang.  The title kind of reminds me of the saying about "horses sweat, men perspire, women glow," in that the premise of this book is that nice families don't fart (and stink).  Given that I have great-grandsons who are ages two and four - I think they will love this funny book.

Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt

As part of its fundraising, my local PBS station recently showed the 1998 PBS documentary "Close to You: Remembering The Carpenters" (and offered a set of their CDs and a DVD of their TV specials as thank-you gifts for certain donation levels).  Their biggest hit, 1970's "Close to You," was the first record single I ever bought, at age 13.  I was looking for a biography of Karen Carpenter and hit upon this one, published in 2010, by Randy L. Schmidt, an elementary school music teacher in Denton, Texas.  The title comes from a 1935 Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart song Karen Carpenter recorded in 1978 and performed in a TV special that year that wasn't released until 1989.

In an interview, Schmidt noted that Karen's brother Richard "never tried to stop [the book], but he didn't want to contribute either."  However, he feels this made others open up and talk more than they might have if Richard had been involved in the project.  Schmidt interviewed nearly 100 people, including most of Karen's best friends.  

I thought I already knew a lot about the Carpenters, but I learned even more from this book.  At the end, it has extensive acknowledgments, a selected discography and list of television appearances, end notes, a bibliography, suggested reading, and an index, so it is a serious biography.  There are even a number of photographs.

addresses to check

1317 Mulberry St, Baltimore

13024 Fidler Ave, Downey

9828 Newville Ave, Downey

8353 and 8356 East 5th St, Downey - apartment buildings they purchased and renamed Close to You and Only Just Begun

8341 Lubec St, Downey

The Age of Cures: How American Scientists Saved Your Life by Barry Werth

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

1323 - 1326 (2026 #33 - #36). July 2026

The Architecture of Wesley Clark Dodson:  Legacy of a Good Name by Mary Helen Dodson

I went to a local presentation about this book by its author (one of the descendants of the architect of the title), held at our local county courthouse, one of many in Texas he designed.  Although the hardbound-with-dustcover book cost $50, I decided to buy it, partly to see how the author approached her subject, given that I might someday like to write a book about my architect first cousin twice removed, Ewald Theodore Pape.

The book was published by the Texas A&M University Press, a good sign.  It's coffee-table size, about 9.5 inches by 10.5 inches and one inch thick, printed on heavy, high-quality paper, and sturdily cloth bound.  A note on the title page indicates publication was assisted by generous funding from the Summerlee Foundation of Dallas.  

The book has over 300 pages and is generously illustrated with color as well as black-and-white photographs, maps, charts, line art, and other drawings.  There are 37 pages of end notes, a five-page bibliography, and an index of slightly over eight pages.  There are also two pages of acknowledgments - at the beginning of the book, rather than at the end - identifying the many people and places who helped Dodson with her research.  

In an interview, Dodson noted that research included visits to the courthouses and county clerk offices (where she reviewed county commissioners court minutes of the years in which those buildings were being built), county histories and newspapers of those periods "so that I could fill in the surroundings of what was going on in the town at the time," and the Portal to Texas History, which had "the records of the Texas State Architectural Association, which he helped found.  And they also had the records of the Presbyterian Church there in Waco, where he was an elder for 20 or 30 years."

As is the case with me and Ewald Pape, this book, as explained in the preface, had its inspiration in genealogical research.  The author was fortunate that the book's subject, her great-grandfather Wesley Clark Dodson (1829-1914) was the also the subject of a collection at Baylor University in Waco that included photographs, letters between Wesley and his wife Sarah, as well as memoirs Wesley had written when he was in his eighties.  

Those memoirs form the framework for the first six chapters (92 pages) in the book, covering his early life in Tennessee and Alabama, his participation in the Civil War, his post-Civil War life in various towns in Texas, and settlement in Waco in 1876.

The next seven chapters (127 pages) discuss his architectural works, with a focus on the "cathedrals of Texas" - his courthouses.  He also designed jails, schools, churches, and other public buildings.  The short (seven-page) chapter seven introduces this section, with a discussion of courthouse construction in Texas in general, and ends with a map showing the 19 counties in northeast Texas where he worked.  This section ends with chapter 13, where the fate of Dodson's buildings is discussed.  Seven courthouses, two jails, and one church are still standing. 

The book ends with a chapter covering the last years of Dodson's life, followed by three appendices - one on Dodson's ancestors, a brief one on his children and grandchildren, and a third listing his buildings that have Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and National Register of Historic Places designations.

Author Mary Helen Dodson retired at age 80 in 2020 from a career as a test developer for Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, and lives in Pennsylvania.  This gives me hope that I might write a similar book in my 70s about an architect whose works (74 at latest count) are located miles away in the Portland, Oregon area.

I will be donating this book to the Tarleton State University Dick Smith Library in Stephenville.  

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I realized when I read James last month that I had probably never read this, one of its inspirations.   Twain was using satire to expose the hypocrisy, cruelty, and deep-seated absurdity of white supremacy in the American South, Jim is portrayed as a loving and ethical father and human being, and Huck chooses not to turn him in as a runaway.  However, there is frequent use of the N-word, and Jim is often characterized as being excessively superstitious, gullible, or easily duped - pretty much as expected, given the era in which it was written.  I also didn't care for Tom Sawyer's stupid game at the book's ending, prolonging Jim's final escape to freedom.  I can see why Percival Everett did not include that in James.

The Odyssey - graphic novel adaptation by Gareth Hinds

After seeing the recently-released Christopher Nolan movie The Odyssey, I wanted to read (or reread -  not sure if I ever read it in school) the book, and this was the only version currently available at my libraries.  At 248+ pages in typical hardbound graphic novel size, it's very accessible, with its detailed illustrations in pencil and watercolor, and without, in author Gareth Hinds' own words in the notes at the end, being "one-hundred-percent historically accurate."

Hinds also notes that his favorite translations of the Homeric poem are by Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles, but he also used the "plainer prose" of E. V. Rieu's and Samuel Butler's translations, and that he used "near-direct quotes" from the first three in various passages in his book.  He also admires "Rodney Merrill's metrically correct verse translation," but did not discover it until he was partway through creating his book.  He also mentions translations by Lattimore, Lawrence, Cowper, and Chapman.  All versions for me to look for among the many holds I've placed.  

Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict

I went to my local public library to pick up The Odyssey and decided to look around for other things to read, and found this book on the "New" shelf (although the library has had it since April).

I'd describe this book as speculative historical fiction, because so little is known about one main character - Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of Egypt - and much is invented about the other main character - Evelyn "Eve" Herbert, daughter of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, the man who financed much of archaeologist Howard Carter's explorations in Egypt, including the one that found the tomb of King Tut.

Eve was present when that tomb was found, but the novel has her obsessed with finding the tomb of Hatshepsut.  This is entirely author Marie Benedict's invention, which she does admit in her author's note at the end of the book.  There's a little more leeway with Hapshepsut, since so little is known about her, and Benedict comes up with her own theory on how and why Hatshepsut was mostly erased from history.

The story is told through Eve (from 1919 to 1923), and Hatshepsut (from 1486 BC to 1458 BC) in alternating sections of short chapters.  Eve's sections are always labeled with her name, but Hatshepsut's instead change based on her role at the time - The Princess, The Queen, The Pharaoh, and so on.

As I've noted in other reviews of her work, I'm not particularly fond of Benedict's writing style, particularly her use of first-person present-tense for her narrators.  Each short chapter begins with a date and location, but using present tense makes the chapters seem less like the journal entries such chapter headings might imply.  The book is over 300 pages long, and feels repetitious at times. 

And yet, I continue to read her books, because she chooses interesting, little-known women to write about.  I felt this was one of her better books, primarily because Hapshepsut was fascinating.  I also appreciate her sharing of the sources she used in the author's note, as they inspire me to read more about the main characters.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

1318 - 1322 (2026 #28 - #32). June 2026

Manufacturing a Duchess by Tracy Wise

Subtitled "A Novel of the Regency Era," I'd classify this as Regency historical romance, in that it's not a Traditional Regency romance in the vein of the genre's pioneer, Georgette Heyer.  Wikipedia's description of Regency historical romances notes that they 

may include more social realism, or, conversely, anachronistically modern characterization, ... their general setting is in Regency England, but the plot, characterization, or prose style of the work extends beyond the genre formula of the Regency romances published by Heyer and her successors. Characters may behave according to modern values, rather than Regency values.

That's certainly the case with Manufacturing a Duchess (clever title, by the way), especially with the main (title) character.  Aurora Hardcastle is the only child of a country doctor turned cloth manufacturer, and, although a heiress, is not your typical duchess-to-be.  Alec Raeburn is a widowed Scottish duke with a young daughter and no money.  He's looking for an heiress who can also be a mother to his beloved daughter.  Aurora's parents send her to London for the season and put her in the care of the parents a former classmate of Aurora's, the gorgeous Millicent ("Missie") Wentworth, whose family needs the money Aurora's parents provide - Lord Wentworth is a gambler.  Meanwhile, Alec is accompanied by his wealthy cousin, Finlay ("Finn," aka Lord Henry, Duke of Galloway), as they are all entering the "marriage mart."  The four, along with Alec's precocious daughter Marjorie, all meet early on at the Tower of London, where Aurora and Marjorie bond.  Both men are smitten with the beautiful Missie, but Alec knows he should focus on Aurora, needing her money.

This was predictable, but still a light, fun, summer beach or vacation read.

I think my mother read every single book written by Heyer - at least, I seem to remember seeing hardbound copies of her other books on our bookshelves when I was a kid (1960s and early 1970s), and I probably read at least one of them.  My mother asked for Cousin Kate (originally published in 1968) for Christmas sometime after it was republished in 2009, and I know I read that one.  It is described as "one of only two Heyer Gothic Regency romances," because of its elements of suspense and horror.  I'm not a fan of either Regency romances or the Gothic genre.

Lost Treasures of Houston by William Dylan Powell

In late February 2025, I was contacted by author William Dylan Powell, requesting permission to use a couple photos of the long-gone Peppermint Park (a kiddie amusement park) in Houston in his upcoming nonfiction book, Lost Treasures of Houston.  He found the photos in a post I wrote about the park for my genealogy and family history blog, and I really appreciate his asking my permission first before using them. 

In January 2026, Powell sent me a copy of the book in gratitude.  As he said in his email, the book "celebrates 200+ beloved places, people and phenomena around town that are now sadly gone."  I'm finally getting around to reviewing it.

Lost Treasures of Houston has 176 large-format pages (9" x 12"), and each page covers two items at most.  The book is divided into five large sections, which are designated with different colors along the head and top of the fore-edge (opposite the book's spine).  The sections are Food and Drink, Entertainment, Retail, Media, and Community, and a table of contents further subdivides these.  (The book also has an index.)

My mother's roots in Houston go back to 1897.  Although I'm not a native, I lived there from infancy in 1958 through 1976, and visited a lot in following years, as I still have family and friends living there.  The book covers places and people that had come and gone both before I lived there and after I moved away, but I found plenty of memories.  There's something in this book for Houstonians of all ages, current and former, and it would be a great gift and/or coffee table book.  It's attractive and easy to read.

The photo I contributed is on page 57, and I'm also credited by name.  Powell also listed all the contributors in the acknowledgements section at the front of the book (page vii).  My one little gripe is that he also should have indicated that the abbreviation HHRC refers to the Houston History Research Center (part of the Houston Public Library), as that is the source for many of the great old photographs in the book.

The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven

This is an inspiring story about a little girl who creates a paper doll that is blown away by the wind and has a number of adventures, before returning to the little girl.  Elisa Kleven's mixed-media illustrations (watercolor, colored pencils, ink, crayon, collage) are wonderfully colorful and detailed.  This story was originally published in 1994, and my review copy is the beautiful deluxe gift edition being published in June 2026, featuring gold foil stamping and an embossed image of the originally-blank side of the paper princess.  In a 2015 interview, Kleven discussed the origins of the book, and how it helped her make sense of the early losses of her mother and brother.  Recommended - I look forward to giving this book to my great-granddaughter.

The Fourth Princess by Janie Chang

I'm not a big fan of the Gothic subgenre and haven't read much of it.  I've read a couple other historical fiction books by Janie Chang, so I decided to request this one from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, as it was the only book that appealed to me in the February 2026 offerings.  I just received it this month.

The book is set in Old Shanghai, China, in 1911.  The story opens with nineteen-year-old Lisan Liu, an orphan whose guardian since childhood is the wealthy Master Liu, applying for a job as secretary to Caroline Vessey Stanton, an heiress American who has moved into the remote Lennox Manor with her husband Thomas.  The Manor belongs to Thomas' uncle Mason Burnett, with whom Thomas is investing in a Chinese railway venture.  

Lisan gets the job and goes to live at the manor, with Master Liu requiring that she come home on her days off.  At the manor, Lisan is haunted by her dreams, and by a vision of a woman in a red dress that she often spots on the manor grounds.  However, her days are brightened by the presence of Yao, a former gardener of Master Liu's now working for the Stantons.

It soon becomes apparent that all the main characters have secrets - or, as in the case of Lisan, others have secrets about her.  Perhaps because I read so few Gothic novels, I have to admit I was surprised by some of the turns of events in the story.  

In an author's note at the end of the novel, Janie Chang admits that the Gothic subgenre required that she:

... really had to hold back on history.  During the first iteration of the book, it just didn't seem gothic enough, and I realized that there was too much about what was going on in China outside Lennox Manor.  It's 1911 and the Qing empire is on its way out (China becomes a republic in 1912), there is talk of revolution, China is fragmenting into a nation carved up by warlords, and political intrigue abounds.  My characters are aware of all the tumult around them, but in gothic fiction the focus has to be the danger from within: the location and/or its residents.  One revision later, less history, more atmosphere, and the story was starting to feel like a gothic novel.

I guess I would have preferred more history, less atmosphere.  The author's note does go on to explain some of the history, as well as other aspects of the novel.

James by Percival Everett

I've been wanting to read this book for some time, given that it was the National Book Award winner for fiction in 2024 and the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 2025 (among other awards).  It's a sort-of retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain from the point of view of the slave Jim (the James of this title).  If I read Huck Finn, it would have been back in high school, and I don't remember it.  So that's next on my list to read.  Regardless, I know enough about Twain's novel to know that James stands on its own.  Incredibly thought-provoking, and a short, easy read (I finished it in thirty-minute increments over six days).

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

1313 - 1317 (2026 #23 - #27). May 2026

Are You Speedy by Tim Button, illustrated by Ana Martín Larrañaga

This is a cute and colorful board book featuring various pieces of construction equipment (plus a tow truck and race car) being asked the same question, "Are you speedy?"  My great-grandsons will love it for that reason alone, along with the mirrored page at the end.  I like that each piece of equipment is named, but I'm not so fond of the made-up words (like diggy, mixy, lifty, scoopy rolly, towy) and two others (dumpy and pushy) that don't have the book's intended meanings, all used to correlate with the adjective speedy.  I don't think their mothers - my teacher granddaughters - will like that either.

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

At 638 pages (in my advance reader edition), this book is almost half again as long as Kathryn Stockett's first book, The Help - but oh so worth it.  Set mostly in Oxford, Mississippi (home of "Ole Miss" University), all the action happens in the months of July through September, 1933, when the Great Depression was affecting almost everyone.

The story is told by two narrators:  Birdina “Birdie” Calhoun, a 24-year-old single woman from the small Mississippi Delta town of Footely, and Margot “Meg” Louise Lefleur, an eleven-year-old apparently abandoned by her mother two years earlier, and living in an Oxford girls' orphanage run by the sadistic Garnett Pittman.

Birdie is living with her mother and grandmother and they're getting low on money, so Birdie is sent to Oxford to see her younger sister Frances, who's supposedly married into money.  That turns out not to be the case, and Birdie ends up staying in Oxford longer than originally planned. 

Before she learns this, Birdie is asked to help with the bookkeeping at the orphanage, where Frances volunteers.  There, she meets Meg, and is appalled by her treatment. Considered unadoptable, when Meg turns twelve, she’ll be sent to work in a Biloxi cannery for no pay.  Birdie tries to help Meg get adopted - and not long after that happens, Meg's mother Charlie reappears.

Charlie and Birdie come up with an outrageous plan to help themselves, Frances and her family, and other women raise money.  I don't want to give too much away in this review - suffice to say "The Calamity Club" is one of the names considered (but not adopted) for their enterprise, and there will be a whole lot of calamity if it fails.

Granted, parts of the plot are a bit unbelievable, but the fantastic characterizations and attention to historical details (I especially loved the descriptions of food Birdie prepared) kept me reading.  This book made me both laugh and cry - there are a number of serious themes addressed in the novel.  It's definitely worth the 638+ pages.

This would be a great book for discussion groups.  One reviewer even created a playlist of songs mentioned in the novel.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Earlier this month, I was looking for something to read (having at that point finished all the books I had that needed reviews) and I checked Libby, the app used by most libraries for their patrons to check out e-books.  One of the options was to see what skip-the-line books were available.  One of those was this one.  I'd read some of Hannah's books, most recently The Nightingale, which I really liked, so I decided to try this one.  The e-book checkout period was only a week, but I was able to get a print copy at the local library.

This book was just okay.  The main character is Frances "Frankie" McGrath, growing up wealthy on California's Coronado Island.  She's 20 and studying to be a nurse when the book begins in May 1966 at a going-away party for her older brother and only sibling, Finley, who has recently graduated from the Naval Academy and is heading to Vietnam.  She's feeling a bit sad and retreats to her father's office, where he has a "heroes' wall" of all the men in the family who have served in the military.  When Finley's best friend Joseph Ryerson "Rye" Walsh finds her there, he questions why there are no women on the wall outside of wedding photos.  He comments, "Women can be heroes."

That comment sticks with Frankie and is the theme of the book.  Right after Frankie enlists as an Army nurse, she learns her brother was killed in action.  Nevertheless, she serves two tours of duty.

The parts of the book set in Vietnam are the strength of this book.  The action and events involving her nursing and life on base in the midst of war are realistic.  Her romances with a married doctor and with Rye, who turns up later, are the book's weaknesses.

Almost halfway through this 471 page book, Frankie returns home.  She's suffering from PTSD and spirals downward.  Once again, the focus on her (failed) romances weakens this part of the book too.  I would have preferred more focus on her two best friends from Vietnam, Ethel and Barb, with more about what happened in their lives after returning home.  They were only in the story when they seemed to drop everything to help Frankie, in California and elsewhere.  

In addition, Frankie's family wealth gives her things (like a car and a beachfront cottage) and privileges (such as a way out of some legal troubles) that most women returning from Vietnam (especially Barb, who is Black) did not have.  But perhaps that is some of the point of the book - even with her advantages, PTSD nearly destroys Frankie.

I did like the numerous references to the music of the era.  I was nine in 1966 so I recognized all the songs mentioned.

Midnight, at the War by Devi S. Laskar

I won this book in Bookreporter's Spring Reading Contest.  I enter these contests for anything that sounds remotely interesting.  This novel, by former journalist Devi S. Laskar, was inspired by journalists like Christiane Amanpour and likely the author's own experiences as a woman of color.

The narrator is American journalist Rita Das, born Elena Keppler, who is half-Bengali.  The prologue is from March 2003, with Rita about to head overseas again, estranged from her husband and recently living with an old flame.  The story then flashes back to April 2001 and an earlier trip overseas and continues on through June 2003.  She's going to the same unnamed war-plagued country, somewhere in the Middle East - really, it could be anywhere.  

Besides battling misogyny and racism, Rita is also dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 - on travel, on being a journalist, on working in the Middle East, and in her personal life.  Her efforts to help her interpreter and his wife on 9/11 caused her to be late flying home - and she missed saying goodbye to her mother, dying from cancer.  Besides the marital and love life problems, there's also issues with her father, the loss of her best friend in the Twin Towers collapse, and the kidnapping of two fellow female journalists (one of whom dies after her release).  There's also trauma from her childhood - a violent death the family witnessed while visiting India, and various incidents of racism as her father's work takes the family to different college towns, many of them conservative towns in the South.

The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart

This was a fun read.  In a Q&A on Goodreads, author Amy Stewart said this about writing The Last Bookstore in America, published in 2011:

I wrote it as a lark, really: We had just bought our bookstore (Eureka Books in Eureka, CA*) and it was a stormy day in January, raining so hard that you literally couldn't see anything outside our windows. It felt like we were a ship lost at sea. We hadn't had a single customer all day--not a promising start to owning a bookstore! I said something like, "It feels like we're the last bookstore in America right now." Then we got to talking about WHY a bookstore would be the last bookstore in America--like, what had happened to all the others--and why a bookstore in a little town like Eureka would be the last to survive. Ebooks had just come on the scene, and I have to say that I predicted many things that came later, including, most recently, Amazon opening brick and mortar stores! So yes, that's what it was all about--plus the gardening!

* Stewart no longer owns this bookstore, but it looks just like the building on the book's cover.

This is Stewart's only fiction title (so far) besides her Kopp Sisters series (of which I've read two so far).  That series was inspired by some historical research for Stewart's The Drunken Botanist (which I've also read).  Like the latter, most of her nonfiction works are related to plants and gardening in some way.

Indeed, there's a secret garden in The Last Bookstore, where a main character grows something that makes the bookstore - also located in Eureka - unique.  The reader catches on pretty quickly on what's going on - unlike the primary characters, Lewis - who has inherited the bookstore from his Uncle Sy - and his wife Emily.  Eureka residents trying to keep the secret from them provides most of the humor in the book.

It's amusing that I read this book as a library loan on a Kindle (although I think the "Gizmo" in the novel that leads to the demise of bookstores is actually a smartphone).  In my thirteen years as a university librarian, I also watched our collection of print materials shrink.  With the exception of children's picture books (which really can't be replicated on a phone or Kindle's tiny screen), students and faculty weren't using them much any more.

I liked this book's ending.  Bookstores (and libraries) have had to reinvent themselves, and have enjoyed a renaissance.   I was bothered by various errors in the text; it would have benefitted from more thorough editing.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

1308 - 1312 (2026 #18 - #22 ). April 2026

Family Drama by Rebecca Fallon

I didn't really like this novel I requested (and got) from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  There weren't many books offered that month that interested me, and maybe I would have been better off winning the other one I requested.

The story starts in November 1997 with the funeral of soap-opera actress Susan Byrne. She is Susan Bliss - Mrs. Al(cott) Bliss - to her history professor husband and seven-year-old twins, Sebastian (Seb) and Viola (Lola) - yes, named for the twins in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.  Susan has died too young, of cancer, after a career that necessitated traveling back and forth from her work in Los Angeles and the family home on the Massachusetts coast.  The novel then goes back and forth in time, from 1983 (when Susan and Al met) to 2013, and various years in between.  

A part of the story I had trouble with was Viola meeting one of her mother's co-stars, Orson, at age seven - and then falling in love with him when she was in college in London at age 20, when he's a big star.  It felt creepy to me, given that Orson was in his late 20s when they first met.  I also didn't care for the way he treated her, particularly a scene in Massachusetts when they accidentally meet up with Orson's and Susan's former producer.

Unlike some other reviewers, I actually have some sympathy for her husband Al.  As a recent widow, I could very much relate to the feelings he had after Susan's death, particularly right after the funeral.  The "certainty is eroding" (page 14 in the advance proof) that it was love at first sight:

Desolate questions.  What he would give to know what she was thinking.  His mind seeks absolutes and absolution, definitive confirmation that it all meant something.

Given everything else that happens in the novel, I could understand Al throwing away the videotapes of Susan's soap opera episodes, the "evidence of Susan's other life" (page 15 of the advance proof).

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

I read this book for Tarleton's No-Stress Book Club, where we don't all read the same book - just the same genre.  This month's genre was science fiction, and, while I could have just talked about some books I've read in the past (and did), I needed to start a new book anyway, and found this one in the "skip the line" tags in Libby.  It said it was a Hugo Award nominee, and I've always been a sucker for time travel books, so I decided to read it.

In this one, set sometime in the near future, the narrator, an unnamed female British government worker, is offered a well-paying position in the new "Ministry of Time" as a "bridge" to an "expat" - a companion to a person brought from the past into the present via a time door recently-acquired by the British.

The narrator is assigned to "1847" - British naval officer Graham Gore (a real person in history), who was about to die that year on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition looking for the Northwest Passage in Arctic Canada.  The book is interspersed with segments relating Gore's experiences with the expedition, as his backstory is relevant to near-future plot.

The best part of the book for me was the interactions of the two main characters with the other "expats" - two other men and a woman brought from 1645 (Cardingham, Battle of Naseby), 1665 (Margaret, the Great Plague of London), and 1916 (Arthur, the Battle of the Somme).  Unlike Graham Gore, none of these were historical persons, but like him, all were pulled from their time period just before their deaths, in order to not affect the history from their eras.  Their adaptations to modern life provide much of the humor and heart in the book, and I would have like to see more of their adjustments and interactions.

These four - and three others who did not survive in the novel (two died in transit and one, Anne from Robespierre's Paris in 1793, died in an escape attempt) - were brought forward partly to test whether time travel is feasible for a human body.  As the book continues, the reader feels that something else is going on with this project - Cardingham and Gore are allowed to train with guns, for example.

In an article, author Kalianne Bradley explains that she got hooked on "a) Graham Gore b) Franklin’s Arctic expedition c) polar exploration in general" late in the pandemic.  Essentially, the book started out as a fanfiction piece, as the unnamed narrator is much like the author (part-Cambodian; her mother is a refugee, and time travel becomes a metaphor for the immigrant experience). The narrator and Gore have a hot romance.  

I had trouble following parts of the book - I'm sure I missed some clues as to what was going on along the way.  There's a twist near the end of the book that I did not see coming, but the conclusion was disappointing for me.  I think I may need to read it again to better understand it, but read Rogue Male (by Geoffrey Household, a book belonging to the narrator that Gore picks up and reads) first.

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

I read this book because Reading Group Guides said it was (one of) the most discussed books in 2024 - and, by this point, the only one of the most discussed books from 2000 through 2024 that I had not read.  It's rather timely with the current (stupid) war with Iran.

This story begins in 1981, when Ellie (a nickname for Elaheh), an Iranian now living in New York City, gets a call from her old, estranged friend Homa.  Then the novel goes back to 1951, when seven-year-old Ellie and her mother have to move after the death of Ellie's father from their nice home into the slums of Tehran.  There, Ellie meets Homa, a girl about her age, and they become friends.  But Ellie's mother later marries Ellie's father's brother, and they move back into a wealthy part of Tehran.  Ellie forgets about Homa, until she shows up years later as a scholarship student in Ellie's elite high school.

The girls both get into the University of Tehran, where Homa plans to study law and become a judge, meanwhile becoming a communist activist, like her father (who'd been arrested).  But naïve Ellie (studying English) shares too much information with the wrong person, and Homa winds up arrested too.  During her six months in prison, she is raped and later has the baby, a girl named Bahar.  A college friend, Abdul, marries Homa before the birth and claims Bahar as his own, but he is killed in the Cinema Rex fire in August 1978.

Meanwhile, Ellie has married a fellow student and they moved to New York City when he is offered a research position there, just before the Islamic Revolution breaks out.  They are unable to have children, and Ellie works at a cosmetics counter in a department store.  It's not long after this that Ellie gets the phone call.  The book ends with an epilogue set in 2022.

This book reminded me a lot of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which was set in Afghanistan and takes place from 1973 through about 2003, primarily in Kabul.  With that book, I found myself eagerly looking forward to finding out what happened next (there were some surprises).  With this book, not so much, although I definitely admired Homa, the true shir-zan (Farsi for lion woman) of this story.

The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenandore

It's 1900, and Tucia (what an awful name), a female doctor who made a fatal mistake in the operating room during her residency and is unable to practice medicine, has lost her job in a corset factory.  Needing to support her disabled son, she joins a traveling medicine show, as her medical degree provides its owner with some credibility.  The show has interesting characters with their own backstories, a somewhat unrealistic romance (for the time period), and climaxes during the great 1900 hurricane in Galveston. There's a happy ending for Tucia and the likeable characters of the story (and the villain, the owner of the medicine show, gets his comeuppance).  

I was disappointed because, despite the title, very little of the story takes place in Galveston, and I really didn't get a feel for the devastation of the storm.  Also,  I did not care for Tucia.  First - what an awful name!  Is it pronounced too-sha, kinda like tushy, or tuh-sha, or too-see-uh, or what?  She suffers from trichotillomania (pulling hairs out from the roots when stressed), and her frequent panic attacks and descriptions of this trait became tiresome.  It almost seemed like the author felt she had to give Tucia even more burdens (raped by the doctor who set her up for failure, a disabled son as a result, and then trichotillomania on top of all that).

Prickles and Prides by Wendy Barron, illustrated by Katherine Blackmore

Prickles and Prides is a rhyming picture book about collective nouns, specifically those used to describe groups of animals.  Author Wendy Barron's text has her anthropomorphic animals taking actions that often create alliteration in her lines of poetry, such as, 

A troop of chimps swings near a swarm of bees

as a scurry of squirrels scamper from a pack of coyotes.

 

Katherine Blackmore's illustrations bring out the wordplay in the text.  I especially liked the illustration for the line, "Who knew a company of moles loves to play in the dark," where the moles are dressed in Elizabethan outfits and appear to be acting in a Shakespeare play on a stage with a starry backdrop.

This book reminded me so much of Ruth Heller's A Cache of Jewels, another rhyming book on collective nouns (and not just those for animals), the first book in her World of Language series.  Similarly, this is Barron's first book in her Tales of Fins, Wings, and Tails series, "which whimsically explores the sounds, movements, homes, and groups of various animals."

This book could easily be incorporated into lessons on vocabulary and parts of speech, as well as on animals.  Even adults are bound to learn new words from this book - prickles (a group of porcupines - how fitting!) was a new one for me!

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!