Well, I’ve kept you up-to-date with everything I’ve been doing, so you’ve seen the photos of Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, James A. Garfield’s home. Saturday, I’m heading to Otterbein University to see Pride & Prejudice, which they say is not what is expected. I’ll tell you about that later. So, you’e caught up with my week. What about yours? What have you done? What are you reading?
Like “Pride & Prejusice”, Home for the Homicides is not what it appears to be. If you’re thinking of a cozy “HallmarK” mystery, think again. I’ve seen one description that called it raunchy, but I’d say steamy. The female cop drops the f-bomb quite frequently. It’s written by Elle Cosimano, author of the Finlay Donovan mysteries, and Hannah Morrissey, author of the Black Harbor suspense novels.
When murder hits Christmas, a town that appears on the surface to be a typical Hallmark town, two cops from the State Bureau of Investigation are sent in. They’ve been challenged by the Director. Whoever does the best job on the investigation gets the one position in Major Crimes. Since Holly Frost lost out to Mark Shepherd when they were rookies, she’s determined to beat him to the answer, despite the sexual attraction between the two. They both have secrets that affect their attitude toward each other and the town of Christmas.
I’m finding it fun. I have more to say, but I’ll save it for tomorrow’s review.
Do you want to tell us what’s happening in your reading life? What have you been doing in the last week?
I don’t have much of interest to share this week. I did have technology trauma on Saturday though. All told it took four hours out of my life. The ‘Office for Mac’ app was apparently no longer supported and it simply ceased to work. So I bought a newer version online and then came time to figure out how to install it on my computer. I eventually managed that and I was so excited when the green checkmark came up but then a final ‘initializing autoupdates’ message appeared and it stalled with only 3 seconds remaining. I tried and tried and tried again but nothing doing. Extremely frustrating. Tried to phone Apple and Microsoft, both of which only had artificial ‘assistants’ who were not up to the task and lacking in any assisting skills. Eventually made an appointment at the local Apple store for two days later where I was helped by the wonderful techie named Kai who solved all my computer issues and who had the best bedside manner. So calm, so knowledgeable, so friendly. Partly through my time there he told me he was the one in his family who helped all the parents and grandparents with their computer problems, which made me laugh and also explained why he was so good at it. Should I ever have to go there again I will definitely be requesting him.
Two books this week:
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW BOOK CLUB by Kate Hash
Andi (in the process of divorcing her husband who has cheated on her three times in the ten years they’ve been married) flies all over the world for her consulting job, helping company founders decide what to do with their company when they decide to retire. On a recent airplane journey she overhears two older women complaining about their daughters-in-law, and none-too-politely gives them a piece of her mind about their ‘impossible expectations’. Later at the baggage claim one of the women, Marilyn, unexpectedly invites Andi to her book club meetings while she’s in Durham for the next four months. Even more unexpectedly, Andi says yes.
So begins a good friendship with Marilyn and all the other members of the book club as Andi dispenses advice to these older women, and they in turn teach Andi a thing or two, and very soon Durham feels like home to Andi.
Things get a bit more complicated when Andi embarks on a romantic fling with a professor and her past ends up putting in an appearance too. Time is running out on her stay in Durham, and she has some big decisions to make.
I had thought I would have enjoyed this book more than I did. The plot was fine, as was the mix of characters, but somehow I felt removed from all of them, and was simply reading ‘about’ them as opposed to living the story with them. I was not crazy about Andi either, as she didn’t seem like the nicest person, nor did I understand some of her thinking processes. Considering the story contained some deep issues, it all seemed a bit surface-level in the telling, and almost like a self-help book in many parts. And despite Book Club being in the title, there were barely any mentions of books at all.
HAPPY BLOODY CHRISTMAS by Jo Middleton
Anna (40-ish, one teenage son, one 7-year-old daughter, and husband Oli) having hosted a pre-Christmas party for friends, wakes up the next morning very hungover and with a to-do list a mile long as her judgemental in-laws will be arriving the following day to spend Christmas Eve with them. Wanting nothing more than to go back to bed and sleep, she nevertheless pulls herself together, makes a cup of coffee, and opens the larder door to get some trash bags so she can begin clean-up from the festivities last night, and promptly closes the door again without having retrieved the trash bags. After a beat she gingerly opens it again but the sight that met her eyes the first time is still there – her boss Colin, dressed as Father Christmas, slumped dead on the floor with one of her own favourite knives plunged into him.
The police seem incompetent in the extreme, so Anna, Oli, and Anna’s best friend Jennie set out to solve the crime themselves. But first, get the kids out of the house until Colin’s body has been removed so they won’t be traumatized for life! And somehow also carry on with Christmas Eve preparations so Anna’s mother-in-law won’t find something to pick on yet again.
This is a very light murder mystery, with lots of silly dialogue sequences, a fair amount of swearing, no thinking required, often very funny, completely ridiculous with nothing plausible about it at all, but with a dash of reality about the trials and tribulations of family life and expectations around the effort that goes into preparing for ‘family events’.
Rereading this book from a few years back.
These strong, brave, talented women give a gal hope.
If, like me, you’re a lover of art. And if, like me, you think strong women rock, then this might be a book you need to read.
It is, I think, an important book about women who stepped out of lives they could have easily been chained to to create art that brought them to the forefront of the field of abstract art, and on equal footing with the men who were their peers.
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
by Mary Gabriel (Author)
Description from Amazon
Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this “gratifying, generous, and lush” true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).
Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting — not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.
Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world’s first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life.
Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.
Hmm. I had a pre-order of that book, but I canceled it because I have been hearing mixed to negative things. Maybe I should have kept it? Oh well, too late now.
I am currently reading DEATH OF A BAD PENNY by A.M. Loweecey. It’s the first in a new series from Alice Loweecey. It features a college professor whose estrange husband shows up after six years only to die. But now, she finds herself on the run with a police officer. It’s more caper than pure mystery, at least so far, but I’m enjoying it so far.