A Strange Companion by Lisa Manterfield

Once About a Book Club - June 2017 Selection

A quick read, more romance than I prefer, but with an indepth topic of grief.  What happens to the soul of those who have passed?  How do we move on from the loss?

Manterfield did a good job of writing in such a fashion that the book almost had a suspense atmosphere that kept you turning the pages.

This is a subscription service which provides gifts along your reading journey.  The gifts are unique to the story itself and were a lot of fun to open along the way.  A way of bringing the story to life.

Quote:  "I had my family and my friends, plenty of people who cared. And so why did I suddenly feel like a remote island, marked clearly on a map for everyone to see, but so far out to sea that no one really new what existed there?"

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

2017 Reading Challenge - Read a Book About War

I've had this book on my shelf for years.  I was intrigued by it for a number of reasons:  It is a Pulitzer Prize winner (Fiction - 1975), it was the basis for the 1993 movie Gettysburg and the author died in 1988 at age 59 - his son, Jeff Shaara, following up with a Civil War Trilogy by authoring the prequel (Gods and Generals in 1996) and the sequel (The Last Full Measure in 1998).

I've read a number of Civil War books - primarily historical fiction and primarily about plantation and slave live.  Some of them have touched briefly on the battles, but not to the extent this book did.  I wasn't sure I would enjoy it since I'm not a real battle buff, but I found myself engrossed and captivated by Shaara's writing.

After an introduction of the main characters (Generals and Officers) the book volleys back and forth between the North and the South giving the perspective of the men on each side of the battlefield. While politically I know which side I stand on, this book doesn't pick sides.  You garner empathy and respect for the men who sacrificed so much whether they wore blue or grey.  War in the 1800's was vastly different than the wars of today.  This book captures so much of that.  The communication between officers via messengers on horse or on foot, the erroneous maps, the food rations (or lack thereof), the literal hand-to-hand combat with no body protection (armor, helmets, etc.), the infield hospitals and doctors to attempt to treat the battle wounds.  While I respect the courage and sacrifice that all military personnel exhibit in volunteering, these men were fighting on our own soil, some of them fighting against long-time friends and family.  Even when things looked dire, even when they knew, without a doubt, they would die they did not falter.

At times I understand the necessity of war, but we must never forget the human lives that are sacrificed on both sides of the battlefield, so we must be sure we know what we are fighting for and if it is worth that ultimate sacrifice.

Quotes:  "Maine in the winter:  air is darker, the sky is a deeper dark.  A darkness comes with winter that these Southern people don't know.  Snow falls so much earlier and in the winter you can walk in a snowfield among bushes, and visitors don't know that the bushes are the tops of tall pines, and you are standing in thirty feet of snow."

"'We are never prepared for so many to die. So you understand?  No one is.  We expect some chosen few.  We expect an occasional empty chair, a toast to dear departed comrades. Victory celebrations for most of us, a hallowed death for a few.  But the war goes on.  And the men die.  The price gets ever higher.  Some officers...can pay no longer. We are prepared to lose some of us...But never all of us.  Surely not all of us.  But ...that is the trap.  You can hold nothing back when you attack. You must commit yourself totally. And yet, if they all die, a man must ask himself, will it have been worth it?'"

And check out my book/wine pairing:  I had visited a friend in Gettysburg and she gifted me a bottle of wine from the Gettysburg Winery - commemorating the 150th anniversary!

Thereby Hangs a Tail by Spencer Quinn

Series

The 2nd book in the Chet and Bernie series.  To be honest, I struggled with this one.  There was a LOT of repetition by Chet, now maybe it's a short term memory problem of dogs, but it gets real old, real fast in writing.  Besides the repetition, did I mention that Chet can be a bit repetitive, it was an easy mystery.  A rather predictable who-dun-it.  While both Chet and Bernie are humorous characters and their bond is heartwarming, I'm hoping Book 3 is a bit more challenging in both the writing and the mystery.

Quote:  "The production of too may useful things results in too many useless people"

The Filter Bubble:  What the Internet is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser

2017 Reading Challenge - Read a NonFiction Book About Technology.

I wasn't looking forward to this challenge 1. because I'm not a huge fan of nonfiction 2. I am not a fan at all of reading about technology.  Yet, I discovered this book on my bookshelf.  I don't remember how I heard about it, but I do remember specifically seeking it out.  Then, of course, like many books it sat on my shelf for years - until this challenge forced/inspired/persuaded me to read it.

And WOW.  You know when you happen to click on an article about the latest advance in oh, say sunglass technology by xxxx, Inc.  Then later in the day you hop on to check your Facebook page and "Hey, what a coincidence - there's an ad for sunglasses from xxx, Inc."  Well, it's not a coincidence.  Its a very creepy, very real thing that Google, Facebook and other companies are doing called personification.  Every click, every like, every item you buy online is being saved as data and placed into an algorithm.  So the next time you go online ads for the items you've looked at before will pop up, articles similar to what you've liked/read before will appear.  Sounds neat right?  Yet, the vastness of the Internet that was to open you up to new worlds, new information, open your mind is now only bringing to your attention, only showing you the things you already like, articles/pages/friends that are liberal/conservative - way that you lean, so that the Internet world is in fact narrowing and by doing so narrowing your world view, your creativity, your empathy and humanity.  Yeah, creepy, scary and real.  "...personalization algorithms can cause identity loops, in which what the code knows about you constructs your media environment, and your media environment helps to shape your future preferences."

For being a tech book, Pariser didn't get bogged down in real techy stuff, so it was fairly easy for a layperson to read and it's not all doom and gloom.  He does offer suggestions at the end as to how we can resist this global personalization.

Quotes:  "Democracy requires citizens to see things from one another's point of view..."

"We don't wake up and brief an e-butler on our plans and desires for the day." (Book was written in 2011 - before Amazon's Echo and Alexa)

"'...if there is not steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news.  Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster must come to any people which is denied an assured access to the facts.'"

"To be free, you have to be able not only to do what you want, but to know what's possible to do."

"The world often follows predictable rules and falls into predictable patterns:  Tides rise and fall, eclipses approach and pass...But when this way of thinking is applied to human behavior, it can be dangerous, for the simple reason that our best moments are often the most unpredictable ones. An entirely predictable life isn't worth living."

"Ultimately, democracy works only if we citizens are capable of thinking beyond our narrow self-interest.  But to do so, we need a shared view of the world we cohabit.  We need to come into contact with other peoples' lives and needs and desires."

"'We don't need more things,...People are more magical than iPads!  Your relationships are not media.  Your friendships are not media.  Love is not media.'"

Small Treasons by Mark Powell

PageHabit (formerly Bookly Box) Subscription - June - Literary Fiction

What a dark book.  In both big and small ways.  Check out this quote:  "...but somehow they ate nothing but strawberries, a pint of them in their plastic coffin..." Yikes.

I'm still deciding if I liked the book or not.  I was first distracted by what is a trademark thing for the PageHabit books; post-it notes from the author interspersed in the book.  The post-it notes themselves aren't distracting, but Powell would have a post-it note referencing something that didn't actually happen for several pages later, so it was more the confusion of the post-it note placement!

The book was a struggle to read as Powell had a prose-like, stream of conscious writing that at times I lost both the plot and any message that he was trying to convey (or maybe he wasn't).  For awhile the book dragged quite a bit due to this, but the last 1/4 gathered speed and suspense as he tried to reign in and tie up the plot lines.  As much as I could stay on target, I think he did.

Without giving too much of this book away, it was a dark and depressing read and all too real in today's world of terrorism.  The book has gotten stellar reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, so I question if my reluctance to "like" the book is more based on my own dark dwelling of the state of our world.

Quotes:  "She knew now her mistake was too quickly abandoning her new life, rushing into marriage, giving herself away before there was a self to give."

"Grief....Suffering, but to a particular end.  Suffering as a means of revelation.  There's a secret, John.  You said so yourself.  It's locked inside all of us and it takes trauma to bring it out....The necessity of suffering, the revelatory nature of it."

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal

Bookly Box Subscription - May - Literary Fiction

There were many things I liked about this book - the Indian/Hindu culture, the honest and real LGBTQ characters (not token/comedic), the chapters volleying the focus on a different character yet bringing them all together.

While I didn't fall in love with any one character or even the book itself, I did come to care about all of them.  There was a flow, almost prose to Satyal's writing that made it fairly easy and enjoyable to read.  Yet, I find it to probably be a more forgettable read without it being the typical fluff book/mind cleanse/guilty pleasure type of book.

While I didn't mark any standout quotes, there were passages that resonated with me in regards to creating and being responsible for your own happiness,  living for yourself and accepting yourself.