I had a great three-day "readcation" last week, and I read the fourth Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, from start to finish. I like to read mysteries in as few sittings as possible, so this was a great time to do it. Plus, this one was super cozy, taking place at Christmastime (1950). The folks of Bishop's Lacey have come to the de Luce estate, Buckshaw, to see the famous movie star Phyllis Wyvern play Juliet as part of a village fundraiser. But when they become snowed in and Wyvern shows up murdered, eleven-year-old Flavia has a crime to solve. A subplot to this one is Flavia's attempt to trap Saint Nick using a sticky substance she cooked up in her chemistry lab. This is one of my favorite Flavia books so far (the first in the series was the other). Spunky Flavia is one of my very favorite characters in all of literature. I enjoyed everything about this, and I highly recommend it and the series as a whole. This would also be a great series for tweens, as it's very clean and Flavia is so likable (and her sisters so detestable). My rating: 4.5 stars.
I looked forward to Jen Hatmaker's Of Mess and Moxie for months, and I was so excited to finally sit down with it. It's hard to describe Hatmaker, but I think she's sort of a cross of several essayists who write about motherhood, faith, and being a woman. She has the humor and writing skills of Anne Lamott and the seriousness and emotional properties of Shauna Niequist. I've read two of her previous books (this is her twelfth): 7, about downsizing her family's consumption of things and habits, and For the Love, which is very much like Of Mess and Moxie. This is a series of essays that range from a love letter on Netflix bingeing to the importance of having friends who can serve as second mothers to her children to youth football in the south to deeper thoughts on faith, forgiveness, and marriage. This one felt a little lighter than For the Love, and there were several essays I was tempted to abandon halfway through because they just seemed too immature, but for the most part, it was a win. I might suggest For the Love as a place to start with Hatmaker, though, as it felt somehow more even and a bit deeper. My rating: 4 stars.
You all know by now that I'm a Billy Collins poetry fan. I love his humor and the easy grace with which he approaches topics. And he can put words in a dog's mouth like nobody else. I've read several poetry collections by Collins lately that were really good but that didn't blow me over as a whole. While I can't point to a single poem of his I really don't like, the last couple books (not read chronologically, mind you) haven't struck a deep chord. Ballistics did. Maybe it's a mood thing. Or maybe it's just a finer collection. I'm not sure. This one made me so happy, and I kept rationing out the pages at night so I wouldn't reach the end too soon. And that's the mark of a good poetry collection. My rating: 4 stars.
And lastly, I finished 101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook before You Die by Jet Tila. You may know Tila from the Food Network, where he was a judge on Cutthroat Kitchen. I don't know him as I pretty much only watch The Pioneer Woman and Guy Fieri anymore. The cooking competition shows kind of leave me cold. But I've always wanted to learn to cook real Asian food, so who better than a Thai-Chinese American to teach me. First off, the cookbook loses one star in my rating for not having a photo of each dish. When will they learn? In a day when folks regularly post photos of their supper on Instagram, why are they still publishing cookbooks without photos of the food? Especially "foreign" food. Bad, bad, bad. Otherwise, I'd say that the book covers all the bases. I loved that there were dishes from a number of Asian cultures (Thai, Chinese, Japanese), and that he explained the different flavor profiles of each culture. While there weren't a lot of stir-fries, there are a number of staple dishes and a heaping helping of unique ones, too. There aren't a lot of strange things involving seafood you've never heard of or fruits or sauces you couldn't find in a large grocery store. The instructions are plain, and he doesn't even insist you own a wok. I will say, though, that this is the first cookbook I've ever read that included swearwords! It made me think of this article. I haven't cooked from the book yet, but I'd say it's a good solid Asian cookbook that isn't overwhelming in its scope. My rating: 3 stars.
Years and years ago--in fact, last century--I watched the movie October Sky. (In the late 1990s, it was considered a date movie.) And at that time I knew it was based on a memoir called Rocket Boys. So I guess this book has been on my TBR list for 20 years. I found a copy in a used book store a few months ago, and I finally fit it into the rotation, and I'm so glad I did. It's a wonderful book about another time and place, specifically, the late 1950s in Coalwood, West Virginia. Homer Hickam, Jr., known to all as Sonny, is growing up in a mining town as the son of the man who runs the coalmine. All of the houses, churches, and everything else in the town are owned by the mine. It's a boom time for coalmining, but changes are coming. On the world stage, too, there are changes. The Soviets have launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and American pride is wounded. With this as the backdrop, Sonny decides to start building rockets. He knows absolutely nothing about rockets, can't weld or cut metal, doesn't know the math needed (he has trouble even with algebra), and can't put his hands on a single book about rockets, but he teems up with five friends to design, build, and launch rockets anyway. Many in the town stand behind the boys; some don't. Sonny's father is set on him becoming a company man, someone to follow in his footsteps. Of course, Sonny has decided that after high school, he wants nothing more of Coalwood; he's on his way to Cape Canaveral if he has anything to say about it. This is a book I love for so many reasons. First, I love books with a strong sense of place, and if there's one thing this book gives you, it's a look at what a coalmining town looks and feels like. Second, it's about nationalism and pride, and boy do we all need a boost of that at this point in our American history. Lastly, it's about someone doing something spectacular from the ground up. While there's a fair amount of grimness in this book, there's still great hope. It's the American story in a microcosm. And I absolutely love it. But the best part is, there are two more memoirs in the series! My rating: 4.5 stars. 
The Perfect Horse has been on my TBR since it came out last year at this time. I kept reading great reviews, and I'm a sucker for war stories with good endings. I started it once months back, but I just couldn't get into it at the time, and I finally decided to try it on audio. I don't normally like my nonfiction on audio because it's much harder for me to follow the "plot" and keeps names and places straight, and I did have a lot of trouble with that with this one. Still, had I waited to read the book, I think I would have ended up waiting a long time. Something had to give. The (true) story, roughly, is the rescue of the royal Lipizzaner stallions of Austria during World War II. The horses, bred for fine skill and show for centuries, fall into Nazi hands during the war and are rescued by American troops (with the permission and blessing of General Patton) and brought to America. I'm of two minds with this book. While it's a good adventure story, I felt that the first half, pre-American intervention, is much too long and slow. I think the whole book could have been cut by a third. But mostly, I have a problem with the dramatic, moralistic tone of the book. I enjoy animals. I find horses regal and honorable creatures. I value them for the joy they bring and the work they've done to build America. There would be no Midwest, especially, without the horse. But in a war that claimed 60,000,000 soldier and civilian lives (2.5% of the world population), and aimed to exterminate the Jewish race, I feel too much emphasis was put on the importance of saving the animals. So many civilians were malnourished and homeless, many had no security whatsoever, many ended up refugees, but people gave their lives to save the horses. I'm glad they did it, and I'm glad over 150 of the horses made it safely to America, but I don't know that it was worth the lives risked to save these animals. It reminds me of folks who fight for animal rights but also fight for abortion rights. The book made me uncomfortable in that regard, because I just cannot reconcile those priorities. But then, I'm writing this after white supremacist attacks in Charlottesville, Islamic terrorist attacks in Spain, and a report that Iceland is proud of its 100% elimination of Down Syndrome through abortion--all in one week. Maybe my tired mind can't care so very much for horses. My rating: 3 stars. 
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates. I did not do this book justice. I listened to it--on only 4 CDs--while doing other projects, and I'm not sure I got much out of it. I really enjoyed Brian Kilmeade's first book, George Washington's Secret Six, about General Washington's spy ring during the Revolutionary War. If you're looking for a refresher on that war, that is your book. I put this, Kilmeade's second book, on my TBR as soon as I knew about it, but I knew I wasn't very interested in the subject. I'm a huge American history buff, but I do prefer modern history. But, in order to clean off my TBR as much as possible by the end of the year, I decided to listen to this one. The title pretty much tells you what the book is about. Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, and one of his tasks was to try to free merchant sailors held captive by pirates in Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco. America had been trying to negotiate their release for 15 years. So there was a little war, things happened, eventual happy ending, and America is a world power. Like I said, I listened to this one, but I didn't necessarily hear it all. I kept getting confused with the names of sailors and admirals, and which mission was being launched, etc. If you like old war stories, I think you'll enjoy this short book. It wasn't bad on any level, but it just didn't hold my attention. My rating: 3 stars.
I'm not sure where to even start with The Poisonwood Bible. There is so much here. Briefly, the story: the Price family (Nathan and Orleana, teenagers Rachel, Leah, and Adah, and young Ruth May), Baptist missionaries, arrive in the Belgian Congo in 1959. In their less than two years there, all manner of tragedy will befall not only the family but the Congo itself when its push for independence is short-lived. The book also follows the surviving members of the family--half of whom stay in Africa, the other half returning to the United States--in the thirty years after their mission trip. This is a huge story, and a writer less talented than Kingsolver would have made a terrible mess of it. At times, especially toward the end of the novel, I felt her hand was a bit heavy, but it's likely hard not to let personal views enter the narrative. This would be the perfect book for a book club; I'm not sure I've read a book I thought was more suited for discussion. Not only do you have the African history and clash of cultures, but you have the missionaries and certain (and uncertain) Biblical views. You also have difficult, even volatile, family dynamics--stemming from both culture and religion. You have racism, politics, medicine, escape, healing, forgiveness, and love. All big topics. To me, this was a book about freedom and independence, both spiritual and corporeal, and what it means and what it costs. You many know a bit about the Congo's troubled history, which will help some while reading. Knowledge of the Bible also helps. My only disappointment with the story is that the post-Congo portion of the book seemed long and didn't feel entirely necessary to me. We do get more of the recent history of the Congo (renamed Zaire, and currently Democratic Republic of Congo), but other than that it just proved to depress me further. I listened to the audio of this one, and it was superb. The narrator, Dean Robertson, does a fantastic job with the different personalities of the story. I looked her up (yes, Dean is a woman), and she said this was her first audio narration and that she did not read the book before recording. This is astounding considering how many French and Congolese words are used throughout, as well as the girls' misuse of words and just the complexity of the story. I do recommend the audio version highly. This is a masterful book. I just don't read many like it. My rating: 4.5 stars.
On the same day I finished my audio of The Poisonwood Bible, I finished Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital. A couple of years ago I read Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial about Memorial Hospital in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. I found that book so well done, I've been stalking Fink for another wonderful book like it, but in the meantime, I found Bellevue. In hopes that it would be similar, I bought it when it came out. I'm happy to report that Bellevue is presented at the same caliber as Five Days at Memorial. Oshinsky chooses the right moments in the hospital's history to present, gives you just want you need to know of the medical terminology and history, and sets a quick pace while being thorough and remaining impartial. It's a well-written account. But it's also just plain fascinating. I'm not one to be fascinated by the medical, but I do love a good history lesson, and the hospital served as a backdrop of American history. From the early epidemics (cholera, tuberculosis, etc.) to modern epidemics (influenza and AIDS), from the Civil War to World War II, from the rise of modern medicine and medical education to the appearance of women nurses and doctors, from 9/11 to Hurricane Sandy, everything is covered. Bellevue began in 1738 as an almshouse and has always given care to anyone who came in the door. And it continues to serve as a public hospital to this day. This really was just a wonderful book. I recommend it. My rating: 4 stars.
And then there's this. A friend at work lent me her copy of I Could Pee on This knowing I like cats and poetry, and I read it in a few minutes. It's a collection of 60 amusing poems about cats, most (all?) written in their voice. I tend to put more thought, huh hem, into my book reading, but every now and then you need to just read a book with a kitten on the cover and the word "pee" in the title. While not high literature, I was entertained by the poems, and I found two particularly amusing: "I Lick" about the obsessive way cats clean themselves, and "Most Amusing" about a cat laughing at a dog in a sweater. My rating: 3 stars.
