Robert Gray on Dolly Parton's Passing, Beans and Bind Debuts in Spokane Valley, Wash., Gloria Steinem Obituary, Meet me in Paris by Kristin Harmel, When Lemons Give you Life by Anna Johnston, The Castle in the Glen by Rhys Bowen and The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman.

Heyho, fellow book travelers! It's been a horrific week or two, leading the end of the summer feeling like it took a whole year to run out. Between dental appointments, and esophageal banding with a gastro doc I've never heard of (because my own gastro doc is so busy and booked out through the first month of next year) and an anesthesia nightmare that had me hallucinating that everyone in the procedure room was some kind of animal (one nurse was a giraffe, Nick was a big brown bear eating a salmon with berries lunch) and they all were dancing and singing in a 70s nightclub with loud furniture colors and patterns, to trying to get more pain meds and trying to get a standing order for paracentisis and the illusive MRI for my painfully decaying knee, I feel like I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I'm fortunate to have a son who is ready and willing to help me with food prep and house cleaning and bills and everything else. If it weren't for him, I don't think I would have made it this far. Now in the past week, we've lost some great people, including the wonderful Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem, both of whom have written books that I've read. Both are amazing women whose like this world will never see again. Anyway, here are some book reviews and tidbits/obits for you all to reflect on.

RIP to the great Dolly P, who wrote books and songs and gifted books to millions of children. God bless her. May she rest at God's right hand.

Robert Gray: Dolly Parton 'Believed Deeply in the Power of Reading'

Everywhere I go, the kids call me 'the book lady.' The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the 'book lady' title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I've done something good with my life and with my success.--Dolly Parton (via the Bookstore at Fitger's, Duluth, Minn.)

Dolly Parton died on Tuesday. She was 80. The Associated Press described her as a "country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim." 

That's true, but she was so much more. The AP also noted that Dolly was a "charismatic humanitarian, whose good humor and straightforward generosity lifted the well-being of communities in her home state and beyond. Fans across generations and geographies say it will remain part of Parton's legacy."

I wasn't surprised by the book world's emotional response to her passing. Dolly was one of us. In addition to being an accomplished author, her legacy is permanently enshrined in the Imagination Library, which to date has donated more than 330 million books to children across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Australia. The project was inspired by her father, whom Parton described as a "very smart man," adding that she "often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write."

Many independent bookstores honored Dolly with, fittingly, books, including Secret World Books, Highland Park, Ill. ("a free used book to any kid 10 and under who comes in through Saturday"); and the Secret Bookshelf, Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland ("giving away 50 books to families from tomorrow to Saturday"). Plenty of options for donating were posted by booksellers like the Book Box, Draper, Utah ("all sales from our kids section will be donated to Imagination Library through the end of August").

Powell's Books, Portland, Ore. ("Dolly understood something simple and powerful: give a child a book, and you give them somewhere to go."); and many more.

Indie booksellers also flooded social media with heartfelt tributes to Dolly. Here's a sampling:

The Book & Cover, Chattanooga, Tenn.: "As a bookstore, Dolly Parton has been with us from the day we opened, part of the very first display we agonized over. As Southerners, she's been with us our whole lives, making sure we had books in our childhood libraries, making sure we knew being proud of who you are goes hand in hand with being kind, and making sure we knew one of the most important parts of living is knowing who you are and doing it on purpose."

Carmichael's Bookstore, Louisville, Ky.: "Dolly saw needs and took concrete actions to help. We would all be better served if we asked ourselves 'What Would Dolly Do?' and do what is in our power to help others. Thank you, Dolly, for everything. We will always love you."

Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif.: "Dolly Parton meant a lot to a lot of people. She did work beyond that of an entertainer.... We encourage you to do what you can in her honor now and always--be brave, be kind, shine on, and don't suffer fools!--but we are also putting a link in our bio to the Imagination Library if you feel like donating to their work."

Main & Mountain Bookstore, Kernersville, N.C.: "Dolly believed deeply in the power of reading.... As a bookstore, we can't think of a more beautiful legacy. Because somewhere, there is a child who fell in love with reading because a book arrived in the mail with their name on it. A child who asked for one more story before bed. A child whose imagination became a little bigger because Dolly believed books belonged in their hands."--Robert Gray

Spokane has been the victim of recent summer wildfires, causing death and destruction untold in the past month. This is a bit of good news to come out of the Spokane area, a new bookstore that I believe will fill residents with hope for the future of the Spokane Valley.

Beans & Bind Debuts in Spokane Valley, Wash.

Beans & Bind, a bookstore and coffee shop, opened August 1in Spokane Valley, Wash., the Spokesman-Review reported. Located at 17325 E. Sprague Ave., Beans & Bind carries general-interest titles for all ages, along with non-book items like tote bags, apparel, stickers, candles, kitchenware, and coffee mugs, much of it sourced from local suppliers. The cafe side of the business serves coffee, tea, espresso drinks, Italian sodas, and other hot and cold beverages. The food menu includes panini sandwiches, pre-made burritos, pastries, cookies, and other treats.

The store's children's section also serves as an event space, and owner Marcella Ferraro and her team have already held book drives, art activities for kids, and author events. Future event plans include things like candle-making classes and Gilmore Girls watch parties, and community members can rent out the space for their own functions.

Prior to opening Beans & Bind, Ferraro had eight years of experience working as a barista and always wanted to open a coffee shop of her own. After finding the space on Sprague Ave., she decided to expand her plans and combine two of her passions.

"I told my husband, 'we should just go check it out,' " Ferraro told the Spokesman-Review. "And then we got in here and saw the space, and I was like, I've got to combine the two things I love the most: reading and coffee, because there's room for it."

"From day one, our grand opening, pretty much every customer we get in here that's local has thanked us for having something like this in the Valley," she said. "Hearing how it's touched people to have a place like this to go…that we've never really had until now is amazing."

I started reading Gloria S's works when I was a pre-teen and a teenager in the 70s, and I would discuss her ideas on the patriarchy and misogyny and society with my mother on the long nights we worked the graveyard shift together at Iowa Lutheran Hospital. I continued to read her books later in my life, and I was always inspired by her clear reasoning and her brilliant wit and wisdom. Nobody, not even popular talk show hosts like Johnny Carson or Letterman or Merv Griffin could get the better of her in an interview...she outshone and outsmarted every one of them. Rest easy, beloved feminist icon.

Obituary Note: Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem, journalist, author, editor, and feminist activist, died yesterday at age 92.

"Calling herself 'an entrepreneur of social change,' Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom," the New York Times wrote. "For more than half a century, she personified the women's movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

"Her own feminist awakening didn't come until her mid-30s, when, as a journalist in 1969, she attended a 'speak out' of women discussing their illegal abortions. Charismatic, articulate, media savvy, deeply empathetic and a workaholic, she evolved into a political and cultural force."

In the 1960s, she was a prolific freelance journalist, contributing to a variety of publications. In 1968, she helped found New York magazine, where she wrote a regular political column. In 1971, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, the ground-breaking feminist magazine, and was an editor there for 15 years. Among many other achievements, she also co-founded the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Women's Media Center, and Equality Now, and produced documentaries.

An autobiography, An Unexpected Life: A Memoir, is being published by Random House on September 22. In it, Steinem writes about growing up "a curious child: going on road trips with her itinerant father, caring for her mother, and devouring every book she could find" and her slow awakening to the problems of poverty and women's roles in society, becoming a leading feminist--and the rest of her long, rich life. Her earlier books included:

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), which includes a variety of essays and material, including her exposé, "I Was a Playboy Bunny"; a tribute to her mother, "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)"; essays on female genital mutilation and the difference between erotica and pornography; and the satire, "If Men Could Menstruate."  Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992), which draws on her own experiences with a lack of self-esteem as well as those of others, including Mahatma Gandhi. The Truth Will Set You Free, but First It Will Piss You Off!: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Rebellion (2019), an illustrated collection of inspirational and outrageous quotes by Steinem along with her introduction and essays. Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986), in which she "revealed the woman behind the myth."

Among her many honors, Steinem received the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award, the Front Page and Clarion awards, the National Magazine Award, the Women's Sports Journalism Award, the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Writers Award from the United Nations, the James Weldon Johnson Award for Journalism, and others. In 2013, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel is a romantic historical women's fiction novel that follows some of her earlier works (which I've read) like The Book of Lost Names and the Forest of Vanishing Stars with lyrical prose and a sturdy, well researched plot that illuminates a part of WWII from various women's perspective and leaves readers pondering the lives of their grandparents and great grandparents during a time when the world was aflame with danger and changing daily. Here's the blurb: Nine Americans in Paris. Seven intertwined love stories. One City of Light.

Love Actually meets The Notebook in a tale of love, loss, and finding your way home, all set over the course of one life-changing week in Paris.

Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time—but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she’s ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future.

Rock star Jackson Quick’s glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn’t toured in a decade. This week, he’ll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who he is at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet.

Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades—including Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he’s ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died—but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he’s on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he’s written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other—and to tell her he came back for her?

Henry’s granddaughter, Melody, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone?

These intertwining stories—plus several others—unfold over a few breathtaking spring days, as an unforgettable group of Americans in Paris must find their way to their own versions of happily ever after in the City of Light. 

Despite it seeming more fragile, Love actually becomes stronger during times of national/international crisis, as Harmel illustrates in each woman's love story, some of which end in tragedy and some in triumph. This poignant book leaves readers emotionally wrung out, having laughed and cried abundantly as we hear of the fate of those caught in the Polish ghettos and others who never even made it to the concentration camps, but were shot by Nazi soldiers or died of cold and disease on trains going to the camps. The horror of mans inhumanity to man will leave you as breathless as the love that sprouts and grows like a tough weed between people in unlikely places. While I learned a lot about the ghettos and the Paris resistence, I also felt that at times Harmel was a little heavy handed with her research, which left me feeling hopeless and finding it hard to continue reading. I'd give this book a B for that reason, and recommend it to fans of Wartime romance.

When Lemons Give You Life by Anna Johnston is an LGBTQ family life and adventure fiction novel that shines a light on a gay senior citizen who has given up on life and his talents as a chef, until one day he finds it all coming back to him when he makes a lemon tart for a fellow inmate of the nursing facility he's living in. Here's the blurb: 

From the author of The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife comes a heart-stirring novel about family, second chances, and the lengths we go for those we love, following a woman fighting to hold onto life and her older brother who's rediscovering reasons to embrace it

Retired Michelin-star chef Griff Barlow has lost his appetite. He's done with grief, guilt, and the beige slop they call food at Sunny Glen Aged Care Facility, where he resides. Six decades of life have handed him all the lemons he can handle, so he breaks into the nursing home kitchen to bake one last tart as his final meal. But the act of cooking stirs a dormant joy, and soon he's sneaking in after dark to serve up flavor and comfort to fellow residents, who come alive with each bite—all while hiding a lie big enough to destroy the one thing he has left to protect.

Lisa, Griff's younger sister and sole visitor, is navigating a midlife ADHD diagnosis, a new romance, and unexpected news that could change everything. Despite their fractured relationship, she keeps showing up, even with hope for reconciliation long buried in the silence between them. But the truth has a way of boiling over, and when secrets, soufflés, and second chances collide, Griff and Lisa may discover a recipe for forgiveness.

Heartfelt and inspiring, When Lemons Give You Life is a deeply human novel about love, forgiveness, redemption, and rediscovering joy when life has lost its flavor.

Grumpy Griff is, I would guess, loosely based on Hell's Kitchen's Gordon Ramsey, the foul-tempered and foul mouthed chef who creates blissful cuisine out of seemingly thin air. Griff has been living a lie, since he pretended to have dementia years ago, so the powers that be would allow him to live with his long-time love, suffering from Alzheimers, in the same nursing home room. No one, including his estranged sister, has copped to the fact that he's been lying, so he uses his anonymous mutism to sneak into the kitchen on weekends, pretend to be their chef, and make delicious food for the patrons of the nursing home, whom he knows don't all need or want bland tasteless mush day in and day out. Everythings going well until he's caught, and his ungrateful sister is really pissed off at him. Fortunately, he's been going through the food budget books and manages to get the adminstrator who has been stealing money from the food budget arrested. Eventually his sister forgives him (she seems a bit too needy and mean to me) and the HEA wraps everything up. I'd give this heartfelt and fun novel a B+, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in nutrition and the elderly, food and what its like to be alone and forgotten after age 65.

The Castle in the Glen by Rhys Bowen is a historical mystery set in Scotland. Here's the blurb: 

A ghostwriter plunges into danger as she unravels the dark secrets of a powerful Scottish family in a thrilling novel of romance and mystery by the bestselling author of Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure.

Australian writer Emma Callander has been recruited to complete the final historical mystery in a series by celebrated author Iris Blackburn. It’s 1965, and Iris’s memory is fading. She’s certain that only Emma can do justice to her novel about a murder on the Isle of Skye. When Emma ventures to Scotland for research, she discovers the story is not fiction at all but rather a true crime, unsolved for more than fifty years.

It was 1904 when a couple’s suspicious drowning led to the disappearance of a mysterious young woman the locals called the Wild Girl. To this day the mystery is unforgettable, especially among the descendants of an aristocratic family who’ll do anything to keep their secrets buried. From the misty Highlands to a medieval castle, Emma and Tony Gordon, Iris’s handsome lawyer, work ever more closely to uncover them.

But while Iris may be known for her fiendishly clever twists, there’s one not even Emma could have seen coming.

The clever protagonist and her search for belonging on the Isle of Sky was engaging and romantic at first, but became slightly tedious midway through. I knew that Emma was being manipulated by Iris right from the start, and I felt that she should have realized that the story she was charged with completing was true, and that Iris was trying to tell her something (but felt it was better to play games with her rather than come right out and tell her what was going on). I've read more than a few of Bowen's books, and her prose becomes more polished in each one. Since this book was so long (over 400 pages) it helped that Bowen never over-stretches her plots, and allows readers a recap or two along the way, so they don't get lost in all the mysterious background stuff. I'd give this book a B-, and recommend it to those who like slow-reading historical fiction that you can savor.

 

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman is the 5th book in the Thursday Murder Club Mystery series, which was made into a TV streaming series a couple of years back with Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. Here's the blurb: Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal.

But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable—something worth killing for.

Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?

 

Though I really enjoyed the first season of the streaming series, I now can't picture the characters in the novel as anyone but the actors who have portrayed them on TV.   So when I read about Ron, I see Pierce Brosnan, and Elizabeth will always be Helen Mirren for me. Daffy Joyce will always be Celia Imrie, and Ben Kingsley the stately Ibrahim. The prose from actor Richard Osman is stunning, and his plots full of twists and turns that you will never see coming. I laughed out loud at several points, and as usual, Osman left me wanting more, so I will be waiting impatiently for the 6th book in the series. I'd give this installment a B+, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about more seasoned (older) sleuths going the distance to solve the various mysteries that plague one's life.