Hi Bibliophiles! This marks the 750th post in my book blog, and after 16 years, I could not be prouder of it and of myself for sticking with it this long, sharing reviews with anyone who stops by.
Meanwhile, I've been reading more ebooks than ever, probably because I've been offered low cost or free ebooks each week through book publisher's email newsletters. Unfortunately, about half of them turn out to be so poorly written that they're unreadable, and I have to abandon them after the first 20-40 pages. Still, the ones I'm able to continue to read generally make it worthwhile to download ebooks at all. So, onward with the tidbits for the second week of January.
I love musicals, and I am really looking forward to streaming this one online, though I don't know if I will be able to afford it.
On Stage Online: The Sorcerer's Apprentice Musical
The world premiere of The Sorcerer's Apprentice http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46981448 musical, a "gender-swapped twist on the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe poem" that had been scheduled for in-person performances at London's Southwark Playhouse beginning January 9, "will now be streamed due to the pandemic and continued lockdown," Playbill reported. The pay-per-view stream will be available January 26 to February 14.
Directed by Charlotte Westenra, the production features Olivier nominee Nicola Blackman (Destry Rides Again), Dawn Hope (Follies), Mary Moore, Marc Pickering (Seussical), Yazdan Qafouri (The Band), and Olivier winner David Thaxton (Passion) with Tom Bales, Ryan Pidgen, Vicki Lee Taylor, and Kayleigh Thadani.
"The latest national lockdown leaves us with a show ready to perform which we are unable to share with live audiences," producer James Seabright said. "I have been inspired by the determination and resolve of our cast, creative team to make this possible whilst maintaining the highest safety standards for everyone on and off stage."
I laud Simon and Schuster for their efforts in crushing the debut of a book by this fascist, white supremicist Senator, who should be thrown out of his government role and into jail, in my opinion. Hawley's a scumbag.
Simon & Schuster Cancels Senator Josh Hawley's Upcoming Book
Simon & Schuster has canceled Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley's upcoming book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, which was scheduled to be released in June. A leader in the Senate of efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election despite no evidence of fraud--continuing even after the insurrection--Hawley has also been accused of helping to incite the mob that stormed the Capitol building Wednesday. Among other things, before the attack, he waved, gave thumbs up signals and raised his fist in solidarity with the crowd that was gathering.
In a statement, Simon & Schuster said the company had made its decision "after witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.... We did not come to this decision lightly. As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator
Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy
and freedom."
I can't believe it has been over 20 years since I read The Sparrow (and was blown away by it...such a brilliant premise and so well written!) and that now it has finally been made into a TV show. I can hardly wait to see it on the small screen.
TV: The Sparrow
Scott Frank, co-creator, writer and director of Netflix's hit The Queen's Gambit, is developing an adaptation of Mary Doria Russell's 1996 novel The Sparrow http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47089906 for FX, with Johan Renck (Chernobyl) directing, Deadline reported.
Frank will write all of the episodes of the limited series and exec produce with Renck, Better Call Saul executive producer Mark Johnson and AMC Studios. The Sparrow is being produced by FX Productions. Deadline noted that the novel "was previously in development at AMC back in 2014 with Michael Perry (The River) writing. Brad Pitt was also previously attached to a feature film adaptation with Plan B and Warner Bros."
This is just heartbreaking, to know that some poor soul had to smuggle an SOS letter into some cheap Walmart decorations to get someone to notice the enslavement of political prisoners in China. Their human rights violations are heinous and ongoing. I plan on finding a copy of this book and reading it ASAP.
Book Review
Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America's Cheap Goods
Oregonian Julie Keith was decorating for Halloween in 2012 when she came across an SOS letter, written in careful English with a mix of Chinese characters, stuck inside a package of cheap decorations she'd purchased at Kmart years earlier. The letter, from Chinese political prisoner Sun Yi, sparked a series of news stories and interest in Chinese forced labor camps. Despite the international attention turned toward the "open secret" of the Chinese manufacturing world, little changed in the long run--in large part, argues journalist Amelia Pang in Made in China, because of Americans' demand for trendy products at impossibly low prices.
Pang, a journalist with ties to the religious activist group of which Sun Yi also was a member, spent three years peeling back the layers of this stranger-than-fiction story, including interviews with Sun Yi, undercover trips to China to pose as a buyer, and covertly following trucks in and out of various Chinese factories to track suppliers and producers. Made in China is a careful account of all she learned, from the establishment of the first Chinese labor camps in the 1930s to the persistence of the present-day laogai ("reform through labor") industry--which "remains the largest forced-labor system in operation today... a vast network of prisons, camps, and various extralegal detention centers." (As recently as 2016, the Laogai Research Foundation, a human rights organization focusing on these Chinese gulags, estimated that more than 1,400 of these camps and prisons existed.)
Pang's investigative journalism is global in scope, drawing on interviews with human rights activists, government watchdog groups, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and laogai prisoners, as well as extensive research in news archives and analysis of various corporate purchase orders and supply chain records. Made in China is not cumbersome, however, despite these many threads; each is necessary to understand the laogai system as a whole, and what drives it. Pang draws clear lines between each seemingly disparate piece to reveal the "darker side to China's rags-to-riches transformation--and our [Americans'] own pleasure in the cheap products we consume daily." With clarity and sensitivity, she exposes the human cost of the global demand for cut-rate products, and provides clear calls to action for individuals, corporations and governments to stem these abuses. Any reader with half a heart will be hard-pressed not to re-examine their own buying habits after reading this incredible, moving account. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm
The Library Book by Susan Orlean was the January book for my library book group. While I usually enjoy Orlean's fiction-like writing style of her non fiction books, This particular book had too many falls down the rabbit hole of research findings that made parts of it as dry and boring as a textbook. Still, Orlean's writing style managed to get back on track, so that by the ending I felt well informed and yearned for a visit to the LA Central Library just to see the odd building murals and architecture. Here's the blurb: “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post).
On
the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles
Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees
and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished,
it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred
thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than
thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set
fire to the library—and if so, who?
Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.
In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book,
Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the
larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the
evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid
life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and
reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected
of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.
Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey
through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much
more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart,
mind, and soul of our country.
I agree with the reviewers blurbs that this is an elegantly written book that is, for the most part, entertaining, though it doesn't satisfy readers need for a tidy ending, as we never do find out if the library fire was started by Harry Peak or if it started accidently due to bad storage conditions. Still, I did like learning about library fires, library book reclamation and other odd tidbits. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who is a bibliophile and who grew up in the sacred space that is the local library.
Space Junk (Houston, We Have a Hottie) by Sara L Hudson was an ebook that I was able to download for free, and I did so on a whim because the title and cover were hilarious send ups of the modern romance genre, and I thought that even if this book is a stinker, it will be full of ironic use of romance cliches and tropes, and I will get a good laugh out of it. (Just to illuminate further, the cover shot is of a naked male torso with six pack abs and a picture of the phallic space shuttle held in front of the male torso's jeans fly, so the rocket is an obvious reference to his penis, as is the title 'space JUNK' with the junk referring to his genitals as well). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that despite the humorous use of cover shot and title, the writing was witty, clean and intelligent, while the plot whooshed along at Mach 3. Here's the blurb: Houston, we have a problem: Five Stars just ain’t gonna cut it for this book!!!
NASA engineer Dr. Jackie Darling Lee is a genius about many things... the male species is not one of them (despite the many cowboy romances she reads).
Then
a little friendly blackmail from a co-worker has Jackie walking into a
Texas saloon ready to initiate Operation Social Life.
After making
friends with her waitress and helping a drunk country beauty get home
safely, she thinks she’s off to a good start.
Flynn West left
his family’s rich ranching life behind after discovering his
girlfriend’s gold digging ways. Now he specializes in vintage muscle car
restorations in his own shop in Houston.
He’s taken women off his radar, until a wild-haired blonde drags his drunk little sister through his front door.
The
moment he sees those thick, black-framed glasses on that slender nose,
Flynn’s captivated. Ignitions ignite, and not just from Flynn’s skills
at hot-wiring cars.
But in the midst of the International
Space Station being threatened and old flames reappearing, can Jackie
and Flynn let go of old hang-ups long enough to reach the end of their
Happily Ever After countdown? Or will it be a failure to launch?
I honestly loved Jackie and Flynn, not just because they had a payload of chemistry, but because they seemed like real people with real jobs and problems. I also enjoyed reading about a man who wasn't intimidated by a woman's doctorate and rocket scientist level genius, but instead found her brain power sexy. Such men have always seemed to be very few and far between, in my experience. My only problem with Flynn was his focus on having a lot of children. Whether he realizes it or not, having babies takes a huge toll on most women, and men wanting children as their legacy is selfish when they're not the ones whose bodies have to bear the brunt of carrying babies to term and going through the harrowing process of labor and delivery, which can be life-threatening. The fact that Jackie somehow abandons her brainpower (she should know the stats on having a number of children and surviving are not in her favor) to agree with Flynn that having a basketball team's worth of children is a great idea, doesn't really fit with the savvy character that the author has set up in the rest of the book. It's also horribly sexist to say that a woman isn't somehow complete or a real woman/wife until she pops out some heirs for her husband. Seriously, that kind of misogyny went out with hoop skirts. Still, I enjoyed most of the rest of the book, and it was a fast read. I'd give it a B+ and recommend it to romance fans who like a mostly-modern take on relationships, or those who have a thing for space and planes and astronauts.
The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith is the February pick for my library book group. I read it as an ebook because I discovered that there were a number of holds on physical copies of the book, and I had heard that it wasn't a very long text to begin with. I was right, in that this short but well written entry of Smith's into the Swedish Noire Mystery genre was a fast and fascinating read. Here's the blurb: In the Swedish criminal justice system, certain cases are
considered especially strange and difficult, in Malmö, the dedicated
detectives who investigate these crimes are members of an elite squad
known as the Sensitive Crimes Division.
These are their stories.
The
first case: the small matter of a man stabbed in the back of the knee.
Who would perpetrate such a crime and why? Next: a young woman's
imaginary boyfriend goes missing. But how on earth do you search for
someone who doesn't exist? And in the final investigation: eerie secrets
that are revealed under a full moon may not seem so supernatural in the
light of day. No case is too unusual, too complicated, or too, well insignificant for this squad to solve.
The
team: Ulf “the Wolf” Varg, the top dog, thoughtful and diligent; Anna
Bengsdotter, who's in love with Varg's car (and possibly Varg too); Carl
Holgersson, who likes nothing more than filling out paperwork; and Erik
Nykvist, who is deeply committed to fly fishing.
With the help
of a rather verbose local police officer, this crack team gets to the
bottom of cases other detectives can't or won't bother to handle. Equal
parts hilarious and heartening, The Department of Sensitive Crimes is a tour de farce from a true master.
Where do I start to describe the funny, sad and wonderful characters that inhabit this book? Smith is a master of efficient prose that marches along a smart plot, but here he takes on the pessimistic yet kind and gentle Swedish zeitgeist with deft hands, making clear the hilarious situations without making fun of the people involved in a mean way...it is done as more of an homage. Every oddball and weirdo is given a hearing and often a shoulder to cry on. You get the feeling that this is a country that could use some antidepressants slipped into the water supply. That said, the laughter balances out the sad and often bizarre cases in a way that makes the book memorable. I'd give it an A-, and recommend it to anyone who reads dark mysteries.
Proceed With Caution by Sandra Alex was another ebook that I got for free, and I'm glad that I didn't pay anything for this amateurishly written romance. Here's the blurb: A heartbroken heartthrob. A fugitive fiance. Sparks fly when Julia flees...right into Colton.
He
had me at hello. Months later, I’m fleeing the state with an
engagement ring on my finger. John isn’t the one. What looks good on
paper is ugly behind closed doors. My sister Liz doesn’t know about
John, but she takes me in, with problems of her own. The night I help
tend bar with Liz is when I meet Colton. Liz warns me about him. Says
that he’s a hardened man. And he looks it, too. With his smouldering
eyes and square shoulders, he’s a force to be reckoned with. But he
notices me looking over my shoulder and teaches me a thing or two about
men like John, and not in a way that I would expect.
Afghanistan
changes a man in a way that nothing else can. Betrayal does the same.
Mix the two and you get me. It’s like I wear a badge, marking my
military background, and then they find out that I’m a Ford boy and
suddenly I’m a piece of meat with dollar signs. But they can all drop
dead, because a woman is the last thing that I want. I bounce at a bar
strictly to protect my little brother. He plays in a band in this seedy
joint, and I’m here to keep his nose clean in more ways than one. But
then Liz brings her little sister Julia in one night to cover, and I
realize that I’m not the only one with a sibling looking over their
shoulder.
The main problem with this book is that it covers all the cliches and tropes of romance novels and doesn't really stray far enough from them to fully reach it's story potential. There's the tatted up hottie who is a wounded vet, and the evil psychotic ex-fiance who plans to harm the damsel in distress because he can't fathom that the woman he wants to possess doesn't want to be his slave and possession. Then there's the sweet young gal who, despite being 'tough' enough to run away from the ex, still needs protection by the tattooed hottie. And said hottie also protects his irresponsible stupid brother who makes bad life choices every chance he gets, and expects his brother to clean up after him. Sigh.
The sex scenes are graphic and focus on some weird sounds and such, but I enjoyed the swiftness of the plot and the HEA ending. Still, I would give this e-book a C+, and only recommend it to those looking for something that doesn't tax their brain much.
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