As you know by now, I'm a huge fan of the Flavia de Luce mystery series by Alan Bradley. I just finished book six in the series (there are nine, with the tenth coming out in January), The Dead and Their Vaulted Arches, and this one was a little different from the ones before it. Because the plot focuses on a more personal issue (Flavia's long-lost mother returns to Buckshaw), the book's murder doesn't really get dealt with until at least two-thirds of the way into the book. I feel uncomfortable telling you much more than that in case you've not reached this point in the series and plan to. It's much better to let it unfold, I think. (How's that for a non review?) This one was just as enjoyable as all the others, in my opinion, but then, I think Flavia can do no wrong. May she never grow up! My rating: 4 stars.
I also finished the second in Homer Hickam's memoir trilogy, The Coalwood Way. (Read my review of the first book, Rocket Boys, here.) These books are simply wonderful, if a bit sad. Hickam has a storytelling ability that is almost unparalleled. I can think of only a handful of other memoirs I enjoy as much as his--and I've read boatloads of memoirs. In this second installment, Hickam (called Sonny) writes about his late high school years when he and his friends are still building their rockets but are also looking toward the not-too-distant day they graduate and leave Coalwood, West Virginia. But there's more going on than this. The mine, where Hickam's father is superintendent, is involved in a risky venture that will either make or break the town. Sonny's mother is increasingly dissatisfied with her life in Coalwood. Sonny can't quite determine what it is that strikes him with bouts of melancholy, so he sets out to analyze it scientifically. Sonny's strained relationship with his father gets worse. A girl who only ever wanted to belong gets her wish in the worst way possible. And Sonny comes through to make his last Christmas in Coalwood a memorable one. Also, Chipper the squirrel runs away. It's set in the late fall and winter, so it's cozy and atmospheric. Hickam, I believe, isn't above embellishing and rearranging the facts of the past to make a good story (read my review of Carrying Albert Home for proof). Some of his stories seem a bit "tall," but for some reason that doesn't really bother me because everything comes together so beautifully. Some might call these books poignant, and some might say they're hopelessly sappy and sentimental, but I can't wait to get my hands on the third book. My rating: 4.5 stars.
It's been a long time since I've read a very traditional memoir, the kind I used to read by the truckload when I first discovered the genre. Lynne Cheney's Blue Skies, No Fences, was one of those straightforward memoirs I cut my reading teeth on. Here, Cheney, the wife of former Vice President under George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, tells about growing up in Casper, Wyoming, in the 1950s. She sets forth the details of her grade school and high school, including the various teachers who influenced her life, Homecoming, prom, clubs, the football team; talks about her family, parents, and the atmosphere of her home; talks about the fun trappings of the 1950s like the music, television shows, and the like; and she discusses her baton twirling competition days. It's a very personal memoir, and while most wouldn't find it terribly interesting because of its mundane nature, I found it entertaining and readable. There's nothing flashy here, just a good representation of post-war life in the west. My rating: 3 stars.
I listened to the sixth in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies last week. This one was a bit different in that it didn't involve many of Mma Ramotswe's agency's detective cases. There wasn't a lot of mystery here like the books before. This one was perhaps more plot-furthering than the others. Mma Ramotswe finds an intruder in her house, and the next day, curiously, a pumpkin on her porch. Mma Makutsi, her assistant, takes up dancing classes and meets a man. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni takes on a new apprentice when one of his flakes out on him. Also, Mma Ramotswe is confronted with a secret from her past. I enjoy this series so much. The books are often concerned with moral dilemmas and the tension between traditional values and modern practices, as well as the future of Botswana. I liked this one as much as the rest. I always listen to this series because the narrator is so wonderful. I highly recommend these on audio. My rating: 4 stars.
And, last but not least, one of the books that's been on my TBR list for the longest, though it's one of the shortest, Ruth Reichl's For You, Mom. Finally. This is a short book that serves as a daughter's biography of her mother. If you've read Reichl's foodie memoirs like Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, you'll be familiar with her mother. I read these books so long ago I have only vague memories of her larger-than-life tough-cookie mother who served moldy food to guests. This book is meant to be a balm for the sometimes harsh way Reichl dealt with her mother in her earlier books, but it certainly doesn't handle anything with kid gloves. There's something about the frank tone of the book that just turned me off. I found it disrespectful and depressing. Her mother was not a happy woman. She felt like she never got to do what she wanted to do, always pulled between the traditional female role of wife and mother and the need to be her own person. She was a complicated person who dealt with mental issues, so it's hard to know when the mother is talking and when her disease is. She comes off as very kooky, and I found myself wishing Reichl would have just left well enough alone. This never got around to being a tribute to her mother. In short, I didn't like this one. I'll be donating my copy because I have no desire to return to it. Some may argue this book has historical significance because it clearly shows what women before second wave feminism felt and suffered, and they may have a valid point, but it was too much for me. My rating: 2 stars. 
I love a good book set in another country. And I love a good mystery. The Widows of Malabar Hill combined these, and I absolutely loved it. Set in 1920s India, the book is about Perveen Mistry, Bombay's first female lawyer, who is in business with her father. Although she cannot appear in court, she finds a role that only she can fill. She goes to the home of three Muslim widows who observe purdah (they do not leave the home), to determine if they are being taken advantage of by the family guardian or if they are signing over their inheritances from their late husband willingly. Things heat up when someone in the household turns up dead--was it an outsider or someone within the house? Interspersed with the current action, we go back in time to learn about Perveen's short-lived marriage. This was a wonderful book. I'm so glad I picked it up, and I hope the next installment isn't far off. If you enjoy a good, well-written mystery, I don't think you'll be disappointed. My rating: 5 stars.
I've hit upon a spate of wonderful books about the Kennedys lately. I bought The Good Son awhile ago, but I was always a little afraid to start it because I had the idea that Christopher Andersen (father of Kate Andersen Brower, author of The Residence, First Women, and Next in Line) wrote sensational books. How could one man have so many contacts that he could write about the Kennedys, Katharine Hepburn, Mick Jagger, the royal family, Barbra Streisand, the Clintons, the Bushes, and on an on? But I decided to listen to the book before donating it. Let me tell you, I won't be donating it. This is the story of the Kennedys with emphasis on the relationship between Jackie and John Jr. There isn't a lot of new information here if you're a Kennedyphile like I am, but it's a fun read. It's a bit gossipy, and there were a couple things I wish I hadn't read (I didn't want to know about Jackie and Ari Onassis in the bedroom, for instance), but it's quite well done. Andersen does seem to land on the side that thinks there was a romantic relationship between Jackie and the married father-of-ten, Bobby Kennedy, which I've mostly just read rumors about. I take it with a grain of salt. But the relationship between mother and son was always a sweet one. John was a high-energy, spirited, polite kid, who didn't do particularly well in school (he failed the bar exam twice before passing), and Jackie was supremely concerned that he grow up with a sense of who his father was and what was expected of him (in a word: politics). Jackie forbade him to learn to fly, and he quit his lessons in deference to his mother, but took it up again toward the end of her life. She'd had premonitions about John Jr. dying in a plane crash, which played themselves out to the horror of the nation. There is a lot here, and it's never a slog. The audio version was very good, with a good (male) narrator who even tried to tackle Jackie's wispy delivery. All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I found myself wishing Andersen would write one focusing on Caroline Kennedy, and then, come to find out, he did. I'll be tracking down a copy of his out-of-print Sweet Caroline soon. My rating: 4.5 stars.
The Penderwicks in Spring is the fourth of the five books in The Penderwicks series. Each book has focused a bit more on certain members of the Penderwick family--book one was about all of the sisters with an emphasis on the oldest, Rosalind; book two was about preventing the father from remarrying; book three focused on the second and third of the sisters, Skye and Jane and didn't have the parents in it at all; and book four focused on two of the younger Penderwicks, Batty, now in fifth grade, and Ben, in first grade. Plus, we're introduced to the littlest Penderwick, Lydia, age two. In this book, Batty discovers that she has a beautiful singing voice, Skye is spurning Jeffrey's advances which upsets Batty, and Batty thinks she's uncovered a horrible secret about her birth and her mother's death. I liked to see the parents back in the picture (I didn't care as much for book three with the absent parents). It was also fun, though oddly disorienting, seeing Batty growing up. She was four in the first book, I think, the youngest of the Penderwicks. Now, she's a good big sister to Ben and Lydia and has interests of her own, namely music. I enjoyed this one as much as the second book, which might still be my favorite, and I can't wait to read the final book, The Penderwicks at Last. If you're looking for a good series for a young girl (or boy, I guess) or like children's literature yourself, try this series. I don't think you'll be disappointed. My rating: 4 stars.
Because I never spend more than $3.99 on Kindle books, I allow myself to try all kinds of titles I might not buy in book form. I recently downloaded Give Your Child the World for 99 cents, so how can one go wrong? The book is written by a woman with a biological son and two adopted kids, a daughter from India and a son from Liberia. All of the kids are within three years of each other in age. With the diversity in her household and traditional Christian values, Jamie Martin wants to be sure her children have a heart for the world, and one of the ways she does this is through reading. The great majority of the book is a list of titles and book synopses for books about every corner of the earth. It's split into regions of the world, and then by age group within those regions. There are dozens and dozens of suggestions, some you've likely heard of if you have young readers, but most will probably be new to you. There is a lot of nonfiction, and she always gives warnings if religion or war is discussed, so you can monitor what you expose your kids to. I enjoyed the book, but I did get weary reading synopsis after synopsis (there are no book covers), and it became a bit tedious reading it cover to cover. I was hoping to get ideas for our children's book collection in the library, but I ended up being too overwhelmed for it to help much. Perhaps this is a better resource if your family is wanting to learn about a specific part of the world. My greatest disappointment is that Martin did not read all of the books herself before suggesting them. Still, overall, exhaustive and quite well done. My rating: 3 stars.
Here's a dark secret about me: I have a three-foot tall pile of yet unread decorating magazines in my study. I've finally started to attack the pile, which has been growing for a couple of years, and I'm finding wonderful gems. I love decorating magazines with an unnatural passion. House Beautiful is one of my favorites (Traditional Home might be my absolute favorite), and whenever they come out with a compellation book, I am sure to read it. House Beautiful released House Beautiful Style Secrets last fall, and I loved it. The book explores eight style secrets and presents photos from homes featured in their magazines to highlight them. A sampling of the style secrets include: "Every room needs a grand gesture" and "Every room needs something that speaks only to you."* There was very little text in the whole book, just a caption for each photo. The book really made me think about what my style secrets would be. Here are a few of the secrets I came up with: "Every room needs a traditional element," "Every room needs a face in it," and "Every room needs to make its own statement in just one sentence." I devoured this book, and I think I might have to buy a copy for my shelves. It was just so much fun, and a number of the rooms really fit with my decorating tastes. If you're looking for specific design help, this may not be the right choice for you, but if you're looking for beautiful eye candy and inspiration, give this one a shot. My rating: 4 stars. 
You all know I'm a fan of any book by or about a Kennedy, so I was excited to begin Edward (Ted) Kennedy's True Compass. It was published in 2009, the year he passed, but it's surprisingly current. Ted Kennedy was the youngest of the nine Kennedy children, and after the death of the eldest in World War II and the assassinations of Jack and Bobby (and the incapacitation of his father due to stroke), he was the patriarch for more than 40 years. He ran for the presidency in 1980 against the incumbent, President Jimmy Carter, but came up short of the nomination. He served for 47 years in the U.S. Senate, representing the state of Massachusetts. He was passionate about civil rights, health care, and gun control, platform issues in the democratic party to this day. He was known for his ability and willingness to work "across the aisle," and seemed to carry no grudges and hold little animus to members of the opposing party. Although he does touch briefly and prickly on the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in the Chappaquiddick incident, where he drove them off a bridge into the water where she drowned, it is clear he is not interested in talking about certain things. He does not address his own drinking, womanizing, and marital issues with his first wife, Joan. Enough has been said about each over the years, and he just didn't go there. Regardless of these omissions, the book does not seem particularly whitewashed nor slanted. It's personable, charming, and quite fair. He calls out some of his shortcomings and shows himself a real man with foibles. We get to choose what we talk about in our memoirs, and he chose mostly his life as a Kennedy and his life in politics and left the rest alone. It was fascinating just how much of American history the man was a witness to, very much on the front lines because of his last name but also his career in the Senate. He knew all the presidents as well as the movers and shakers in both political parties. It was fascinating. I really did love this book, and even though I generally disagree with him politically, I respect the amount of passion and commitment he had for the governance and future of America. I "met" Ted Kennedy when he was campaigning for Al Gore in 2000. He had a strong handshake and a gorgeous shock of white hair. He had Caroline Kennedy with him, who was reserved and did not engage the crowd. She seemed very, very frail. That is my only brush with the Kennedy dynasty. Well, that and the dozens of books I've read about them. I highly recommend this one for those who adore books about the Kennedys, but also for anyone interested in recent American history. My rating: 4.5 stars.
I'm always on the lookout for fiction to listen to on audio, and I love a good mystery/thriller, so I put a hold on Tangerine many weeks ago and was finally able to listen to is last week. It's a tale of suspense set in Tangier, Morocco. Lucy shows up in Tangier to surprise her old friend, Alice. But things spiral out of control shortly thereafter, and Alice's husband shows up dead. It's obvious that one of the women is mentally unstable, but which one? This was a pretty good book. I have no issues with the writing. The characters are fine. But it was a little too overwhelmingly...dire. There was a constant desperation that was relentless and turned me off after awhile. This may be because I listened to it instead of read the book. One of the two audio voices may have made the story more dramatic than the paper experience might have been. Still, I like some subtlety in my stories, and this one lacked it. It definitely wasn't as bad as some others in the same genre I've listened to this year (huh hem), but it wasn't much above average, either. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I could have used more story (I loved the feeling that I was in Morocco and would have loved more of this) and less strife. I'd recommend this one for someone looking for moody escapist literature. My rating: 3 stars.
