A Sunday Update and No Rehashing or Venting.

Martine's

It's been a nice week. Jo and I went out for Valentine's Day dinner at Martine's and had a lovely meal, as always. Nice that we've now got a few restaurants to enjoy. We'll keep exploring. Oh, the staff is so friendly (and that's the case at all of the places we frequent, btw). Young lady, who was front of house, was very impressive, still in high school, said she was heading home afterwards to study for exams. Small stuff I guess, but still nice to see such positive attitudes.

Often the case at Bigfoots

Tuesday, we went downtown, treated ourselves to a donut at Bigfoot donuts, a cherry surprise, and then wandered around the shops, just enjoying the day and spending some money.

Qualicum Beach

On Friday, we took the day and went down for our monthly excursion to Qualicum, had lunch at Gary's Bistro, checked out the normal places; The Little Black Dress (Jo) and other stores; Mulberry Bush Books (me) and the Bookcase and then we wandered higher up the main street to places and discovered shops we hadn't experienced before. There are many great little places in Qualicum to visit if you take the time to explore.

As you may have guessed, I did check out many book stores in our wanderings. So since it's Sunday, let's check out my newest books as well as update with reviews of the couple of books I've completed since my last update.

Just Finished

1. The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes #2).

"The Sign of Four is the 2nd Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle. Like all of the other Sherlock Holmes books I've enjoyed, this was an excellent mystery and interestingly enough had lots of action (cue the high speed boat chase down the Thames).

Holmes is bored. He has no cases on which to work. To his compatriot Dr Watson's chagrin, Holmes is indulging in his 7% solution of cocaine. Having an interesting case keeps his mind active, having none, he needs stimulation.

A young woman, Miss Morstan, arrives on the doorstep of 221B Baker Street. Years ago, she had gone to a hotel to meet her father, newly returned from India where he had served as an officer in the British Army. But her father wasn't there. Six years later, she receives a pearl in the mail. Then later another gem. She has now seen an ad in the London paper, telling her to come to Lyceum Theater, where she will get further info on her missing father and also on her 'inheritance'. She can bring along two people, hence Holmes and Watson.

This begins an interesting mystery, involving the The Sign of Four. Holmes, Watson and Miss Morstan (Watson is quite taken with the young woman, btw) are taken to meet Mr. Thaddeus Sholto. Sholto's father was a compatriot of Miss Morstan's father and they had taken a treasure out of India, one that was hidden from Mr. Morstan. Thaddeus's father was murdered and he is trying with his brother to find it. 

Upon discovering the body of Thaddeus's brother the mystery deepens; it's definitely a closed door case at this point. But we will now involved the Baker Street Irregulars, Scotland Yard and a chase across the city as Holmes and Watson try to discover the Sign of Four and the stolen treasure for Miss Morstan. It's all fascinating, mysterious and filled with deductions, investigations and suitable action. I've read most of the Holmes' mysteries and this was the 1st time I'd read this one. Glad I did as it was reliably enjoyable. (4 stars)"

2. Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld #4). I was hesitant to add this one as I gave up on it, but I try to provide reviews of all books I attempt. Just because I don't finish a book doesn't mean you shouldn't try it and judge it on its own merits, not on my opinion. I provided no rating because I never finished it.

"I didn't finish Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong. This is the 4th book in her Women of the Otherworld fantasy series. Instead of featuring Elena, the only female werewolf in the world, this one features Paige, a witch. I had read three other books in this series and for the most part, enjoyed them.... well, one not quite so much. I've plodded away at book 4 since early January and after a month am still only one 1/3 of the way into it (175 pages). While it is reasonably interesting, I also have found it easy to put down.

Paige and boyfriend, Lucas, a lawyer and, um, warlock are asked by his step - father to help find the killer of Cabal (a supernatural business group) teenagers, these teenagers have left home and are street kids. Three or four have been murdered, Benecio, Lucas's father has been asking Lucas to join the family business... Er, um... Paige and Lucas begin investigating the attacks... and there you go, that's as far as I really got.

I won't rate this as it's unfair since I never completed it. It's well written and flows nicely, either I'm not in the mood for it right now, or it's not resonating with me. I'm sure others will enjoy it. I did enjoy the TV series based on the first few books in the series, but I don't think I'll be reading this series any more. (NR - No rating)"

Currently Reading  (Those books that I've started since completing the two above)

1. Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo (1874). Continuing my Feb Focus on books written prior to 1900.

"Ninety-three, the last of Victor Hugo's novels, is regarded by many including such diverse critics as Robert Louis Stevenson and André Maurois as his greatest work.

1793, Year Two of the Republic, saw the establishment of the National Convention, the execution of Louis XVI, the Terror, and the monarchist revolt in the Vendée, brutally suppressed by the Republic. Hugo's epic follows three protagonists through this tumultuous year: the noble royalist de Lantenac; Gauvain, who embodies a benevolent and romantic vision of the Republic; and Cimourdain, whose principles are altogether more Robespierrean. The conflict of values culminates in a dramatic climax on the scaffold."

2. Head of a Traveler by Nicholas Blake (Nigel Strangeways #9). I've previously read one other Strangeways mystery. I'm enjoying getting re-acquainted with him.

"Upon stopping by Plash Meadows to visit revered poet Robert Seaton, Nigel Strangeways is absolutely enamoured: like something out of a fairy tale, a perfect Queen Anne house stands among sprawling lawns as smooth as green glass, and whimsical gardens overflowing with roses. And not so far off, a dark and winding wood…

While visiting with the Seatons, Nigel gets more than he bargained for. He learns about the contentious legacy of the family estate, stumbles upon a secret meeting, and at lunch, when table talk turns to murder and motive, Nigel leaves feeling a little uneasy…

Two months later, Nigel is summoned back to the Seaton’s in less pleasant circumstances. A headless corpse has been pulled from the river behind the house and no one can identify the victim… let alone the murderer.

As oppressive thunderstorms roll through the countryside and the mood in the house takes a turn, Nigel has only one lead, but it’s throwing up more questions than it answers. The corpse bears a striking resemblance to Robert Seaton’s long-missing brother… but he walked into the ocean ten years prior, never to be heard from again.

Bewitched by poet and property, will Nigel be able to put his admiration aside and get to the bottom of this case?"

New Books (Bear with me as there are a few. I did some spring cleaning yesterday to make room on our shelves. Jo would be so proud of me.) 😎

1. Maus : A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman (1986). I bought this partly as my protest against book banning in the US, but also because I felt I should read it.

"Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon, succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. It is, as the New York Times Book Review has commented, "a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event."

Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: the first is Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author's tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor's tale - and that, too, of the children who somehow survive even the survivors."

2. Fifty-Four Pigs by Philipp Schott (A Doctor Bannerman Vet Mystery). (Full Disclosure - I was sent this by the publisher with a request that I provide an honest review. It will be the next book I start)

"For readers of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series comes a lighthearted mystery with an incredible sense of place A swine barn explodes near a lakeside Manitoba town, putting veterinarian Dr. Peter Bannerman on a collision course with murder and a startling conspiracy. Peter is an odd duck, obsessed with logic and measurable facts, an obsession he puts to good use in his veterinary practice. When a murder is connected to the swine barn explosion and his friend Tom becomes the prime suspect, Peter feels compelled to put his reasoning skills, and his dog Pippin's remarkable nose, to use to help clear him. The situation darkens with a second murder and a series of break-ins, including at Peter's house and clinic, but Peter has a hard time knowing when he is out of his depth, despite warnings from his brother-in-law Kevin, an RCMP officer. It becomes increasingly clear that something extraordinary is behind all this, possibly international in scope. Ultimately Peter finds himself out in the middle of frozen Lake Winnipeg during a blizzard, fighting for his life and confronting a horrifying realization he had been blind to all along."

3. The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (1962). After many years, I finally tried A Clockwork Orange by Burgess and have since been interested in exploring his other work.

"Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious."

3. The Anarchist Colossus by A.E. van Vogt (1977). A new Sci-Fi author for me. Let's see how I like him.

"The Anarchistic Colossus...takes place in a future Earth where anarchy has become a way of life - it is, however, a very special branch of anarchy, one that is controlled by the mysterious Kirlian computers...and one that must deal with a race of aliens who look upon the conquest of Earth as part of a very entertaining game..."

4. Worlds Without End by Clifford Simak (1964). I read Simak's City back in university and then refreshed myself with it a couple of years ago. I've been exploring his Sci-Fi since. This is a collection of short stories.

"A link between yesterday and the tomorrow that was here already... Dreams constructed and maintained by society... A world-to-world search for an elusive secret...

The bizarre, weird strange creations of things and world only Clifford D. Simak could have written... and make believable.

Three stories three times as weird by one of the master writers of this, or any, world.

Contents:
- Worlds without end
- The Spaceman's Van Gogh
- Full cycle."

5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818). For some reason I've avoided this book. I will try to get it in as part of my Feb Focus - Pre - 1900 books.

"The idea for the story came to the author, Mary Shelley, in a dream she had about a scientist who had created life and was horrified by what he had made. This Gothic-style romance is among the first of true science fiction novels, if not the first. A young scientist named Victor Frankenstein, after going through his own near-death experience, decides to play God and create life in the form of a grotesque creature, which turns into a nightmare. Through his experience, he learns that the gift of life is precious, not disposable. His journey and personal transformation has deeply affected readers. "

6. A Girl Called Echo: Northwest Resistance by Katherena Vermette (#3). I read the first book in this YA graphic novel series. Looking forward to continuing it.

"The third graphic novel in the A Girl Called Echo series, Northwest Resistance follows Echo Desjardins and her travels through time. Going back to 1884, Echo finds herself in the thick of a new Métis resistance led by leader Louis Riel, who has returned from exile to resist encroaching forces from the East and to ensure his people’s rights are honoured. For Echo, the experience is empowering, focusing her own identity and giving her the strength to confront the challenges in her life."

7. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester (2021). I've been enjoying Winchester's non-fiction ever since Jo bought me The Professor and the Madman for Xmas a few years back. 

"Land--whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city--is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing--and have done--with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the world's land--and why does it matter?"

8. A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (1960). One of my local book store owners told me this was his mother's favorite book. I'd enjoyed The Last Unicorn so thought I should check it out.

"Conversing in a mausoleum with the dead, an eccentric recluse is tugged back into the world by a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift—the final chance for his own happiness. When challenged by a faithless wife and aided by a talking raven, the lives of the living and the dead may be renewed by courage and passion, but only if not belatedly. Told with an elegiac wisdom, this delightful tale of magic and otherworldly love is a timeless work of fantasy imbued with hope and wonder. After multiple printings since 1960, this newest edition will contain the author's recent revisions and will stand as the definitive version of an ageless classic."

9. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead (2021). Another new author for me.

"“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?"

10. Ride a Pale Horse by Helen MacInnes (1984). MacInnes has become one of my favorite authors of the Cold War spy thriller.

"When Karen Cornell, a beautiful journalist on assignment in Czechoslovakia, agrees to help a would-be defector by carrying top-secret documents to Washington, she is pulled into an astonishing web of terrorism, political assassination, blackmail, espionage, and treason in the highest levels of both superpowers. One false move could cost Karen her life -- and throw the world into violent war."

11. The Case of the Haunted Husband by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason #18 / 1941). Jo and I have been enjoying the Perry Mason TV series on ME TV and now I want to try the books. Simple as that.

"Aspiring actress Stephanie Claire just wants to be in pictures. But she may end up in mug shots when she gets herself caught up in a crime. It's up to Perry Mason to find the truth behind a suspicious scenario starring a menacing movie mogul, a hoodwinked housewife, and a man no one ever seen--alive!"

12. Murder in Chinatown by Victoria Thompson (Gaslight Mystery #9 / 2007) Always entertaining cozy historical mystery series set in New York.

"Sarah Brandt finds herself involved in the secretive world of Chinatown when she is called to attend the Irish-American wife of a Chinese merchant. Since the United States government has prohibited Chinese women from immigrating, many Chinese men in New York City have married Irish girls. Although these women encounter prejudice from the white community, Sarah learns that the women are quite happy with their lot in life.

Their mixed-race children don’t necessarily share their contentment, however, and when one of these girls runs away, Sarah uses her detecting skills to help her family find her. When the girl is later murdered, Sarah must ask her friend, Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, for help. Has someone in her family killed her for rejecting an arranged marriage with a Chinese man to elope with a penniless Irish lad? Has her would-be fiancé killed her for dishonoring him? Or has someone in her husband’s family killed her because of her mixed blood?

Together, Frank and Sarah must learn to understand the Chinese culture before they can unravel the secrets of Chinatown and find a killer."

13. A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw (Lane Winslow #1 / 2015). A new series for me. I was attracted by it at Mulberry Bush Books as they had the whole series on display and also because it's set in BC. (Confession time - I thought it was set in Britain when I read the first sentence - "... war weary intelligence officer leaves London.... an honest mistake, right? Just like it took me a few books before I realized that Alexander Smith McCall wasn't Alexandra or that Laurie R. King wasn't Laurier) 😏

"It is 1946, and war-weary young ex-intelligence officer Lane Winslow leaves London to look for a fresh start. When she finds herself happily settled into a sleepy hamlet nestled in the idyllic interior of British Columbia surrounded by a suitably eclectic cast of small-town characters she feels like she may finally be able to put her past to rest.

But then a body is discovered, the victim of murder, and although she works alongside the town’s inspectors Darling and Ames to discover who might have possibly have motivation to kill, she unknowingly casts doubt on herself. As the investigation reveals facts that she has desperately tried to keep a secret, it threatens to pull her into a vortex of even greater losses than the ones she has already endured."

OK, ok! I get it, it's walkies time!

So there you go. All caught up. See any that interest you? Well, I'm off for now. Walkies then lunch time. Enjoy your upcoming week!