Saturday, November 2, 2024

Sharee's Selection: "The Death of Mrs. Westaway," by Ruth Ware

 

Sharee's Selection: "The Death of Mrs. Westaway," by Ruth Ware

Date: Noon Saturday November 23

Site: TBA.

 

On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money.

Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, this is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.

Monday, August 26, 2024

Patty's Pick: "The Other Einstein," by Marie Benedict

Patty's Pick: "The Other Einstein," by Marie Benedict

Date: Noon Saturday October 26

Site: Ice Haus in Murray









Saturday, June 22, 2024

Ann's Book Pick: "The Last Letter from Your Lover," by JoJo Moyes

DATE: Noon Saturday August 17

ANN'S BOOK PICK: "The Last Letter from Your Lover," by JoJo Moyes

SITE: Ramblin Roads in Midvale

 


 

 

 

It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband.

Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.

A spellbinding, intoxicating love story with a knockout ending, The Last Letter from Your Lover will appeal to the readers who have made One Day and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society bestsellers.

 

Monday, April 22, 2024

Amy's Literary Choice: "The Diamond Eye," by Kate Quinn

 

DATE: Noon Saturday June 22

AMY'S LITERARY CHOICE:  "The Diamond Eye," by Kate Quinn

SITE: RED Robin in Murray




The bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story.

In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son—but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper—a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.

Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC—until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness.

But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.

Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.

Saturday, April 6, 2024

CITY WEEKLY: Decorate with books? :o

 

Books are hip for both decorating and political grandstanding, but they're even better if you read them. 

By John Rasmuson


I have friends who renovated their condo just before the COVID pandemic began. It was a standard makeover with recessed lights in the ceiling, flat-screen TVs on the walls and Persian-style carpets afloat on a sea of laminate flooring.

One living room wall was given over to built-in shelves. On them—in addition to some books—were family photographs, a pottery vase, some candles and other stuff you might find at HomeGoods, all displayed in deliberate asymmetry, shelf by shelf.

On a visit to admire the completed project, I gravitated to the bookshelves and the rows of colorful books, as orderly as a rank of soldiers on parade. Curiosity draws me to others' book collections because I believe what a person reads is as telling as what they wear or what's in their refrigerator. To find Moby Dick sharing shelf space with Pride and Prejudice that day surprised me.

"Wow! Moby Dick!" I exclaimed, taking up Melville's novel. But a conversation about the "great American novel" quickly collapsed, losing its legs before ever reaching Jane Austen. I realized my friends had not read—and likely would not read—the books on their shelves. Reading the books was not a factor in their display-shelving: Their collection was strictly decorative.

This is "biblio-chic," I thought, taking a cue from Tom Wolfe's 1970 satirical coinage, "radical chic." Or put another way, it's just "putting on the dog." Either makes the point, but both are premised on the fact that readers have an edge over nonreaders.

I recall a visit to a richly appointed house in Washington, D.C., in the company of a bookish friend. Afterward, I commented on the considerable appeal of the decor. "I didn't see any books," he replied disapprovingly.

In my experience, reading imparts status. Reading such classics as Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice grants higher status. By displaying them in your living room, you make the unspoken claim that you have bought them, read them and saved them to be read again.

Sometime after my visit to the renovated condo, and during the pandemic, I detected traces of biblio-chic in network newscasts. In the darkest days of COVID, television journalists tended to work from home—so did the pundits they interviewed on the air.

Most appeared against a backdrop of overflowing, floor-to-ceiling shelves like you see in a college professor's office. (Nobody appeared with a background of kitchen counters or a walk-in closet.) Besides armloads of books, the shelves held curios, photos and objets d'art carefully curated to look un-curated.

The setting seemed incidental, but I soon realized its staging was deliberate. The camera's frame was adjusted so that a viewer's wandering eye was steered to a particular place on the bookshelf. In the case of PBS News Hour anchor Judy Woodruff, it was a vase of flowers visible to viewers from just behind her left shoulder—a comforting, springlike touch in the depth of the COVID winter, I must say.

Such staging was even more noticeable when the interviewee was an author. Oftentimes, their latest book was placed so the front cover faced into the room from behind the shoulders of the talking head. I took it as subliminal advertising. To the viewer whose eyes had found the staged book and were squinting to make out the title, the message was: "If you like what I say on TV, you'll love my book!"

I concede that a fondness for reading skews my view and causes me to judge those who don't share it. I am better served by the concept of "bookshelf wealth." It is manifest in much the same way as the wall-size collage I have fussed about as "biblio-chic," but an article in January's Architectural Digest praises it as a leading design trend of 2024. The difference between the two is that "bookshelf wealth" accrues like compound interest when books on display have been read and saved for rereading. If "'bookshelf wealth' is about authenticity," as the article asserts, then showcasing unread books is not.

Those who display literary classics acknowledge the cultural import of a novel like Moby Dick. That they feel no need to read it hints at inauthenticity. I imagine them visiting a bookstore to pick up a classic novel or two, 10-to-12 inches high, with a green cover to match the accent pillows on the sofa.

However, "biblio-chic" is a minor fault given the determination of the philistine caucus in the Utah Legislature to clear shelves of books they don't like. Utah schools have recently banned more than 250 books, but HB 417 threatens a misdemeanor charge to those who make "objectively sensitive" books available to school kids.

The list of usual suspects includes The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Any of the three would be a welcome contribution to my own "shelf wealth."

Utah isn't the only place with censorious officials. According to PEN America, an advocacy organization dedicated to free expression, 4,000 books have been challenged in the last three years in the U.S. A church in Tennessee actually burned a pile of J.K Rowling's books in its parking lot.

I doubt most of the book burners had read any of Rowling's Harry Potter novels, and I don't mean to make a connection between a few unread novels gathering dust in a Salt Lake City condo and the live-streamed torching of Harry Potter.

I find both troubling. It's just a matter of degree.

BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS!

 

 


What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Carl Sagan, 1980