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305. The Dogs of Riga

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Henning Mankell

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense, Foreign

326 pages, published April 13, 2004

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Dogs of Riga is the second book in the Kurt Wallander Detective series and takes place in Sweden during 1991.  A few days after Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off, a life raft washes up on a beach containing two dead men, dressed in expensive suits.  In his pursuit of a solution to this case, Wallander finds himself in Riga, Latvia where he is plunged into a world of corruption and intrigue.

Quotes 

“He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.”

 

“The experience he’d gained during his years in the police force had given him this unambiguous answer: there are no murderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder.”

 

“I’m a religious man,” he said. “I don’t believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But there’s a difference between our countries that is also a similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different

faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don’t have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and I would not want to exchange that for your abundance.” “I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.”

 

“We live in an age when the mice are hunting the cats…nobody knows who are the mice and who the cats.” 

My Take

Having just read the short Wallander book An Event in Autumn and enjoyed it, I was looking forward to another installment featuring the cynical Swedish inspector.  I liked The Dogs of Riga and appreciated the strong writing by Henning Mankell as well as the interesting locale of Latvia (I place I knew little about).  However, I wasn’t captivated by it.  I’ll try another Wallander and see if I like the next one better.

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293. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Alli Angulo

Author:   Florence Williams

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Psychology, Health, Environment

304 pages, published October 20, 2005

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

In The Nature Fix, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain.  In her quest to discover the beneficial impact of nature, Williams’s research takes her to Korea, Finland, and California.  She discovers that the natural world has incredible powers to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships.

Quotes 

“Annie Dillard once said, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

 

“Here are some of the essential take-homes: we all need nearby nature: we benefit cognitively and psychologically from having trees, bodies of water, and green spaces just to look at; we should be smarter about landscaping our schools, hospitals, workplaces and neighborhoods so everyone gains. We need quick incursions to natural areas that engage our senses. Everyone needs access to clean, quiet and safe natural refuges in a city. Short exposures to nature can make us less aggressive, more creative, more civic minded and healthier overall. For warding off depression, lets go with the Finnish recommendation of five hours a month in nature, minimum. But as the poets, neuroscientists and river runners have shown us, we also at times need longer, deeper immersions into wild spaces to recover from severe distress, to imagine our futures and to be our best civilized selves.”

 

“We don’t experience natural environments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel, nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other. Nature, it turns out, is good for civilization.”

 

“We don’t experience natural environments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel, nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other. Nature, it turns out, is good for civilization.”

 

“Beginning in the early 1980s, Stephen and Rachel Kaplan at the University of Michigan noticed that psychological distress was often related to mental fatigue. They speculated that our constant daily treadmill of tasks was wearing out our frontal lobes.”

 

“people are happiest when they are well enmeshed in community and friendships, have their basic survival needs met, and keep their minds stimulated and engaged, often in the service of some sort of cause larger than themselves.”

 

“Among his dozens of influential studies are those showing that exercise causes new brain cells to grow, especially in areas related to memory, executive function and spatial perception. Before Kramer’s work, no one really believed physical activity could lead to such clear and important effects. Now people everywhere are routinely told that exercise is the single best way to prevent aging-related cognitive decline. Kramer’s studies helped change the way the profession”

 

“The difference in joy respondents felt in urban versus natural settings (especially coastal environments) was greater than the difference they experienced from being alone versus being with friends, and about the same as doing favored activities like singing and sports versus not doing those things. Yet, remarkably, the respondents, like me, were rarely caught outside. Ninety-three percent of the time, they were either indoors or in vehicles.”

 

“The idea of solvitur ambulando (in walking it will be solved) has been around since St. Augustine, but well before that Aristotle thought and taught while walking the open-air parapets of the Lyceum. It has long been believed that walking in restorative settings could lead not only to physical vigor but to mental clarity and even bursts of genius, inspiration (with its etymology in breathing) and overall sanity. As French academic Frederic Gros writes in A Philosophy of Walking, it’s simply “the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found.” Jefferson walked to clear his mind, while Thoreau and Nietzsche, like Aristotle, walked to think. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” wrote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. And Rousseau wrote in Confessions, “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” 

My Take

The Nature Fix confirmed something that I have long suspected to be true.  There are significant psychic and physical benefits to spending time in nature and the absence of time in the great outdoors can have deleterious effects on human beings.  And the more time spent outside, the better.  Not groundbreaking, but a good reminder to spend time in nature every day.

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291. Transcription

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Clare Telleen

Author:   Kate Atkinson

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

352 pages, published September 25, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

At the beginning of World War II, 18 year old Juliet Armstrong obtains employment with an obscure department of MI5.  Her job is to transcribe the conversations between an undercover MI5 agent and British Fascist sympathizers that he has recruited.  The work is both tedious and terrifying.  After the war has ended, she assumes the events of those years are done and buried.  However, ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. Juliet finds herself thrust into the Cold War and begins to understand that her previous actions have consequences.

Quotes 

“Do not equate nationalism with patriotism… Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.”

 

“The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel,”

 

“[…] but her mother’s death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.”

 

“The blame generally has to fall somewhere, Miss Armstrong. Women and the Jews tend to be first in line, unfortunately.”

 

“Human nature favors the tribal. Tribalism engenders violence. It was ever thus and so it will ever be.”

 

“Being flippant was harder work than being earnest”

 

“…it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was.”

 

“People always said they wanted the truth, but really they were perfectly content with a facsimile.”

 

“But wasn’t artistic endeavor the final refuge of the uncommitted?”

 

“Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (“The clowns are the dangerous ones,” Perry said.)”

 

“She didn’t feel she had the fortitude for all those Tudors, they were so relentlessly busy – all that bedding and beheading.” 

My Take

Transcription is the third book by Kate Atkinson that I have read.  The first two, Life After Life and A God in Ruins, were loosely linked by several shared characters and were engaging reads with compelling characters.  While I enjoyed Transcription, it does not live up to those other books.  There were several times when I was a little bored reading this book and asked myself, “where is this going?”   The failure of the book to provide an interesting answer to that question is the reason I didn’t rate it higher.

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288. SS-GB: Nazi-occupied Britain, 1941

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Len Deighton

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, World War II

344 pages, published February 12, 1979

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

SS-GB:  Nazi-occupied Britain, 1941 is a detective story set within an alternative history scenario in which the United Kingdom has surrendered and is occupied by Nazi Germany.  The King is a hostage in the Tower of London, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Winston Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories, the SS is in charge of Scotland Yard and a secret Resistance force is sabotaging the Germans.  The protagonist of the story, Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer (nicknamed “Archer of the Yard”) is asked to assist SS Standartenführer from Himmler’s personal staff in what seems, at first, to be a routine murder case.  However, things are not as they first appear and Archer finds himself navigating a labyrinth full of intrigue and the highest of stakes.

Quotes 

“You spend too much time listening to what people say.”

 

“A man can get used to yellow fever, thought Douglas, but many of them die in the attempt.”

 

“Thomas Aquinas argued that suicide is a sin because it is an offence against society. By taking one’s own life a man deprives society of something that rightfully belongs to it.”

 

“Pity.  Best pastime a police officer can have, in my opinion. Fishing teaches a man patience; and teaches him a lot about men.”

 

“Perhaps hell is like that; a discordant confusion of anxious souls.”

 

“And yet, after all the reasoning was done, he’d fallen in love with her. There was no denying it; he wanted her in every way. But as a policeman, he distrusted love; too often had he seen the other side of it, the violence, the suffering and despair it could bring.” 

My Take

I liked, but did not love, SS-GB.  Deighton is a decent writer and creates an interesting scenario with his alternative history detective story. However, I found the characters a bit flat and the plot too opaque.

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287. The Crystal Cave

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Scot Reader

Author:   Mary Stewart

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Mythology

494 pages, published 1970

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Crystal Cave takes place in fifth century Britain, a country torn by chaos and division after the Roman withdrawal.  The book tells the story of a young Merlin, the illegitimate child of a South Wales princess who will not reveal to the identity of Merlin’s father, and how he discovers that he possesses incredible psychic gifts which he will use to play a dramatic role in the coming of King Arthur.

Quotes 

“The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.”

 

“Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another.  A man cannot be doing all the time.”

 

“I think there is only one. Oh, there are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe, and in the bloodstained shadows where men like Belasius wait for them. But I believe there must be one who is God Himself, like the great sea, and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we all come to Him in the end.”

 

“the god does not speak to those who have no time to listen.” 

My Take

While I have an interest in the Arthurian legend, The Crystal Cave was too long and too focused on Merlin for me to give it a recommendation.  My husband Scot read it as a teenager and in his opinion it is the weakest of Mary Stuart’s trilogy on King Arthur.  There were some interesting parts, but I have to say I much preferred The Mists of Avalon and its take on Arthur.

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284. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Jancy Campbell

Author:   John M. Barry

Genre:  Non Fiction, History

524 pages, published April 2, 1998

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

In 1927, the Mississippi River overflowed its banks and swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico.  Almost a million people, out of 120 million in the country, were forced out of their homes.  Rising Tide is the story of this forgotten event, the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known and tells how this unprecedented flood transformed the nation, laying the foundation for FDR’s New Deal.

Quotes 

“It was like facing an angry dark ocean. The wind was fierce enough that that day it tore away roofs, smashed windows, and blew down the smokestack – 130 feet high and 54 inches in diameter – at the giant A. G. Wineman & Sons lumber mill, destroyed half of the 110-foot-high smokestack of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, and drove great chocolate waves against the levee, where the surf broke, splashing waist-high against the men, knocking them off-balance before rolling down to the street. Out on the river, detritus swept past – whole trees, a roof, fence posts, upturned boats, the body of a mule.”

My Take

I always like to learn something new and in Rising Tide I learned about the great flood of 1927, an event I had never heard of before, and the impact on the region banking the Mississippi River as well as the rest of the country during that time.  While John Barry is a skilled writer, I have to say that I was happy to finally finish this book as it began to really drag.

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272. Britt-Marie Was Here

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

324 pages, published May 3, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When the story begins, Britt-Marie finds herself in a bad place.  Her husband Kent has left her and she must find a job and start over.  The unemployed office places her in charge of the Recreation Center in the just scraping by town of Borg.  Saddled with an obsessive-compulsive personality, Britt-Marie does what she always does:  clean and bring order to disorder.  Over time, her efforts extend to the kids of Borg, a motley lot who are crazy for football (soccer).

Quotes 

“One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.”

 

“At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?”

 

“You have to understand that when one is just standing there looking, then just for a second one is ready to jump. If one does it, one dares to do it. But if one waits, it’ll never happen.”

 

“It’s difficult to know when love blooms; suddenly one day you wake up and it’s in full flower. It works the same way when it wilts—one day it is just too late.”

 

“Because if we don’t forgive those we love, then what is left? What is love if it’s not loving our lovers even when they don’t deserve it?”

 

“An unreasonable amount of paperwork is required these days just to be a human being.”

 

“A human being may not choose her circumstances, but she does choose her actions.”

 

“A few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that.”

 

“The reason for her love of maps. It’s half worn away, the dot, and the red color is bleached. Yet it’s there, flung down there on the map halfway between the lower left corner and its center, and next to it is written, “You are here.”

 

“All marriages have their bad sides, because people have weaknesses. If you live with another human being you learn to handle these weaknesses in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take the view that weaknesses are a bit like heavy pieces of furniture, and based on this you must learn to clean around them. To maintain the illusion.”

 

“My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.’ The next words that come are smiling. ‘You’re my sunny story, Britt-Marie.”

 

Sometimes it’s easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing.”

 

“If you support Tottenham you always give more love than you get back… Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they’re almost good. They always promise that they’re going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you.”

 

“Human beings are the only animals that smile as a gesture of peace, whereas other animals show their teeth as a threat.”

 

“All passion is childish. It’s banal and naive. It’s nothing we learn; it’s instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to earth, but passion inhabits the universe.  That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads.”

 

“I was under the impression that one became a policeman because one believes in rules and regulations.” “I think Sven became a policeman because he believes in justice.”

 

“You love football because it is instinctive.If a ball comes rolling down the street you give it a punt. You love it for the same reason you fall in love. Because you don’t know how to avoid it.” 

My Take

While I enjoyed Britt-Marie Was Here, it is my least favorite of Fredrik Backman’s books that I have read.  Much better is A Man Called Ove and Beartown.  Nevertheless, Britt-Marie Was Here is worth a read.  Backman’s understanding of human nature and what makes us tick is present as is his ability to create a world that feels real and worth spending time in.

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270. The Sandcastle Girls

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Chris Bohjalian

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

299 pages, published July 17, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Sandcastle Girls recounts the love story between Elizabeth Endicott , a young American  woman that  accompanies her father to Armenia in 1915 to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide by the Turks and Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter.   Elizabeth and Armen’s story is juxtaposed with a present day narrative by  Laura Petrosian, granddaughter  of Elizabeth and Armen and a novelist living in suburban New York. After seeing a newspaper photo of her grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss – and a terrible secret that has been buried for generations.

Quotes 

“But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?”

 

“It was Aldous Huxley who observed, “Every man’s memory is his private literature.”

 

“When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening.”

 

“Those who participate in a genocide as well as those who merely look away rarely volunteer much in the way of anecdote or observation. Same with the heroic and the righteous. Usually it’s only the survivors who speak-and often they don’t want to talk much about it either.”

 

“we have on earth exactly the amount of time that has been allotted to us, no more and no less. We really have precious little control.”

 

My Take

Right before reading The Sandcastle Girls, I read Before You Know Kindness, also by Chris Bohjalian (I did not realize the books were by the same author until I was halfway through The Sandcastle Girls).  While both books are well written, I much preferred Before You Know Kindness.  I had a hard time following the narrative of The Sandcastle Girls and, in contrast to Before You Know Kindness, found the characters a bit one-dimensional.  The positive takeaway is that I learned a lot about the horrifying Armenian genocide, a piece of history about which I only know a cursory amount.  As with so many other 20th Century atrocities, it is a depressing reflection on the capability of our fellow man to inflict unspeakable violence on other human beings for the crime of having a different ethnicity and/or religion.

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263. Drunken Fireworks

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Humor, Novella

Only on audio, published June 30, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Drunken Fireworks is a short novella by Stephen King that was only released as an Audio Book; there is no print version.  It tells the story of Alden McCausland and his mother who, as the result of an unexpected life-insurance policy payout and a winning lottery ticket, come into some money.  They spend their days drinking in their small house by Lake Abenaki in Maine.  Across the lake, is the Massimo family’s Twelve Pines Camp which consists of a big white mansion, guest house and tennis court that Alden’s Ma says is paid for by the “ill-gotten gains” from Massimo Construction.  Fueled by envy, the McCauslands start a Fourth of July arms race with the Massimos which escalates until Alden ends up in jail.

 

Quotes 

 

 

My Take

I’m a big fan of Stephen King.  He always writes a compelling tale with real life, relatable characters.  While much briefer than his other works, Drunken Fireworks lives up to that standard.  It also succeeds as a cautionary tale against trying to keep up with the Joneses.

 

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262. Paris for One

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Romance

106 pages, published February 5, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The main story in this collection by JoJo Moyes is an account of 26 year old, introverted Nell, who lives in the UK and has never been to Paris.  After planning a romantic weekend to Paree with her new boyfriend, she is bitterly disappointed when he fails to show and she is stuck in the City of Light by herself.  However, when Nell meets the mysterious Fabien, things begin to turn around.

 

Quotes 

“Nell looks at the label and comes to. “Oh, I’d never wear it. I like to buy things on a cost-per-wear basis. This dress would probably work out at like…thirty pounds a wear. No. I couldn’t.” “You don’t ever do something just because it makes you feel good?” The assistant shrugs. “Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.”

 

“She is in Paris, in Parisian clothes, getting ready to go out with a Frenchman she picked up in an art gallery!  She pulls her hair back into a loose knot, puts on her lipstick, sits down on the bed and laughs.”

 

“Are you still with this man?

On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn’t marry a man without a bookshelf.

No bookshelf?

In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader’s Digest.

Many people in this country don’t read books.

He didn’t have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone’s character?”

 

“Because she knew already that this would be the thing that would end them. And that in the deepest part of her, she had known it from the beginning, like someone stubbornly ignoring a weed growing until it blocked out the light.”

 

My Take

Since starting my reading quest, I’ve read a lot of Jojo Moyes (After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, Silver Bay) and have, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed her books.  While Paris for One is more a trifle than her other books, it was still fun to spend time with it.  Perfect for a quick escape.

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