Hi everyone, our June Read is Magpie is Murders by Anthony Horowitz

And just a reading note on our June title!

StarCat lists the book as containing 236 pages; however, this book has a book within the book – the protagonist, a book editor, reads a submitted mystery within the book; and we the readers get to read the additional mystery as well as the mystery the book editor is involved with – so the page count for the entire book is 512 pages!

And I mention this in case there are others out there, like myself, who like to read the monthly book in the week before the book club meeting – with that 512 pages in mind – we might want to start reading a bit earlier!

Print copies of the book can be picked up at the Circulation Desk at any time; and currently, at 3:32 p.m. on Friday, May 20, there are eBook and downloadable audiobook versions available in the Digital Catalog/Libby.

Our June Meeting will be held at the library on Friday, June 10, 2022 | Time: 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. | Location: Conference Room at the library

And I haven’t quite finished writing my overview of the The Lost Apothecary; that will follow soon; and in the meantime, here is the list of recommended reads from book club members, discussed at our May gathering:

Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan

 Joy Davidman is an unhappily married woman in the early 1950s. Her rocky marriage leads her to rely on her faith to get through the days. She begins a correspondence with author C.S. “Jack” Lewis, which they both find uplifting and captures more than their minds. Through all the poverty, death, and hard times, the love between Jack and Joy grows until there is no room for anyone else in their world but each other. Callahan (Where the River Runs) crafts a masterpiece that details the friendship and ultimate romance between the real Davidman (1915-60) and Lewis (1898-1963). Readers may be familiar with Lewis’s “Narnia” books, but this historical novel of a love based on friendship and faith will not disappoint. The story cocoons readers in the world of the 1950s where women had almost no voice, but Davidman found hers, and romance besides. VERDICT Fans of Karen White and Mary Alice Monroe will enjoy this book. Callahan’s writing is riveting and her characters spring to life to create a magical and literary experience that won’t be soon forgotten. -Library Journal Review

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Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism by Charles Clover

A fascinating study of the root motivations behind the political activities and philosophies of Putin’s government in Russia

Charles Clover, award-winning journalist and former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, here analyses the idea of “Eurasianism,” a theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography. Clover traces Eurasianism’s origins in the writings of White Russian exiles in 1920s Europe, through Siberia’s Gulag archipelago in the 1950s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and up to its steady infiltration of the governing elite around Vladimir Putin. This eye-opening analysis pieces together the evidence for Eurasianism’s place at the heart of Kremlin thinking today and explores its impact on recent events, the annexation of Crimea, the rise in Russia of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, as well as Putin’s sometimes perplexing political actions and ambitions.

Based on extensive research and dozens of interviews with Putin’s close advisers, this quietly explosive story will be essential reading for anyone concerned with Russia’s past century, and its future. – From the publisher

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Cokie: A Life Well Lived by Steven V. Roberts

Roberts (My Fathers’ Houses) offers a moving testimony of the remarkable life and legacy of his wife, trailblazing journalist Cokie (1943–2019). Through depictions of her faith, family, work, writing, and friendships, Roberts shares engrossing anecdotes about his partner from their over 50 years together, as she “crash through glass ceilings… with her impressive mind, impish wit, and infectious laugh.” As the daughter of powerful Louisiana politicians—her mother, Lindy Boggs, succeeded her husband, Hale, in Congress in 1973 after his death in a plane crash—politics and current events were a second language for Cokie. She later parlayed that fluency into a career as a highly respected journalist who covered Washington, D.C., for NPR and ABC and was unafraid to speak truth to power and ask tough questions. In addition to the early challenges he and Cokie encountered dating as an interfaith couple—in the face of resistance from their Jewish and Catholic parents, respectively—Roberts describes with admiration how, notwithstanding the constant demands and stresses of work, Cokie managed to be a devoted friend in times of need, as well as an attentive wife and mother, and bestselling author of histories that restored significant women to their merited prominence in the U.S.’s founding. This loving tribute is likely to gain the celebrated journalist a whole new crop of fans. – Publishers Weekly Review

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Shetterly, founder of the Human Computer Project, passionately brings to light the important and little-known story of the black women mathematicians hired to work as computers at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Va., part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NASA’s precursor). The first women NACA brought on took advantage of a WWII opportunity to work in a segregated section of Langley, doing the calculations necessary to support the projects of white male engineers. Shetterly writes of these women as core contributors to American success in the midst of a cultural “collision between race, gender, science, and war,” teasing out how the personal and professional are intimately related. She celebrates the skills of mathematicians such as Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Hoover, whose brilliant work eventually earned them slow advancement but never equal footing. Shetterly collects much of her material directly from those who were there, using personal anecdotes to illuminate the larger forces at play. Exploring the intimate relationships among blackness, womanhood, and 20th-century American technological development, Shetterly crafts a narrative that is crucial to understanding subsequent movements for civil rights. – Publishers Weekly Review

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How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

Everyone knows that African Americans were once enslaved in the U.S., but how well do we understand what that means? Atlantic staff writer and poet Smith explores this question by visiting sites emblematic of American slavery, including Jefferson’s Monticello, the Whitney plantation, which rejects Old South nostalgia to focus on the enslaved, a Confederate cemetery, Juneteenth’s birthplace of Galveston, and Goree Island in Senegal, embarkation point for thousands of Africans headed to slave markets in the Americas. Along the way, Smith engages with conflicted tour guides and historians, ambivalent Senegalese students, Confederate reenactors, and descendants of the enslaved and enslavers, including his own grandparents. Smith probes the contradictions of our collective memory and how deliberate miseducation, nostalgia, and denial fuel a belief in Black inferiority and white innocence. Jefferson’s cosmopolitan image, for example, depended on “the people he allowed to be threatened, manipulated, flogged, assaulted, deceived, and terrorized,” while Confederate apologists insist their ancestors weren’t reliant on slavery, despite copious evidence to the contrary. Ultimately, Smith concludes that “in order for our country to collectively move forward,”” we need “”a collective endeavor to learn, confront, and reckon with the story of slavery and how it has shaped the world we live in today.”

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Anticipation is running high for Smith’s powerful and diligent exploration of the realities and ongoing consequences of slavery in America. – Booklist Review

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The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Nora Seed believes her life is made up of wrong choices. She didn’t become an Olympic swimmer; she quit her brother’s band; she left her fiancé two days before the wedding. Living with crippling disappointment and situational depression, Nora decides that the only right choice for her is to end her existence. But between life and death there is a midnight library, a library that contains multiple volumes of the lives she could have had if she had made different choices. With the help of the friendly librarian Mrs. Elm, Nora tries on these lives in hopes of finding one where she will truly be happy. In the process, Nora finds that life is made of choices of both little and big consequence, and sometimes the choice to believe in oneself is both the biggest and smallest decision a person can make. Haig’s latest (after the nonfiction collection Notes on a Nervous Planet, 2019) is a stunning contemporary story that explores the choices that make up a life, and the regrets that can stifle it. A compelling novel that will resonate with readers. – Booklist Review

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My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine Johnson

In the 1940s, Johnson began working in mathematical research at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). As a “human computer,” she, along with many other men and women, performed complicated calculations that assisted engineers in aeronautical safety. After NACA transformed into NASA in 1958, her work came to include calculating space trajectories, flight ascension, shuttle reentry, and shuttle safety. Johnson’s work at NASA is only one part of her extraordinary life, as recounted in this lovely posthumous memoir, co-written with her daughters. The memoir chronicles Johnson’s childhood in the mountains of West Virginia, her love of learning, her prodigious talent for math and music, and her career as a mathematician. Especially touching are Johnson’s recollections of historical events, such as World War II and the civil rights movement, and her relationships with her family, coworkers, and educators. VERDICT Readers will enjoy Johnson’s personal accounts of the space race and the roles of Black women in STEM. This wonderful, insightful memoir is the perfect companion piece to Margot Lee Shetterly’s best-selling Hidden Figures, which recounted the lives of Johnson and her colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. – Library Journal Review

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The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Quinn (The Huntress) returns to WWII and the secretive world of Bletchley Park in this immersive saga. Debutant Osla Kendall meets fellow Bletchley Park recruit and London East End resident Mab Churt on the train in 1940. While working at Bletchley, they share a room at the home of Beth Finch, a young woman beaten down by her demanding mother. After discovering Beth’s talent for solving crosswords, Osla helps Beth get a job interview at Bletchley Park. Though Beth is shy and reclusive, she shines in her work on breaking codes. But when she discovers someone at Bletchley is likely a traitor, no one believes her. Soon, she winds up the suspected traitor and is committed at Clockwell Sanitarium after having a mental breakdown. In 1947, almost four years later, Beth contacts Osla and Mab, who help Beth escape from Clockwell. Together, the women work to crack a code that will help them find the traitor. Quinn’s page-turning narrative is enhanced by her richly drawn characters, who unite under the common purpose of Britain’s war effort, and by the fascinating code-breaking techniques, which come alive via Quinn’s extensive historical detail. This does not disappoint. – Publishers Weekly Review

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Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen

A clever prologue referring to Romeo and Juliet sets the stage for Bowen’s (“Royal Spyness” and “Molly Murphy” series) diverting romantic adventure in Venice, complete with intrigue, mystery, and, woe. On her first trip to Venice in 1928, 18-year-old Juliet “Lettie” Browning falls in love with both the city and Leo, the handsome heir of Conte Da Rossi. The trip sets in motion events that result in Lettie’s unexpected life in World War II Venice. In 2001, Caroline, Juliet’s grand-niece, retreats to the family home when her marriage disintegrates. Aunt Lettie dies during Caroline’s visit and leaves her a box containing two sketchbooks, three keys, a diamond ring, and glass beads. Caroline travels to Venice to scatter Lettie’s ashes, where she unravels the mystery of the items in the box and learns that Aunt Lettie was far from the proper English art teacher she seemed. What fun it is to follow the clues with Caroline as the significance of each object is revealed in Juliet’s diary, leading Caroline to a surprise inheritance.

VERDICT This novel’s engaging entertainment is enhanced by its dual time line that uncovers Juliet’s secrets, and a plot enlivened by coincidences and romance. A must-read for Bowen fans and historical fiction enthusiasts – Library Journal Review

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Have a great weekend everyone (it sounds like it will be a good weekend to stay near the A/C and read!),

Linda