Messenger of Truth, by Jacqueline Winspear

So. As I discovered earlier, I read this book out of order. Somehow I thought I was on book 3 and this turns out to be book 4 and although I do have book 3, Pardonable Lies, I haven’t yet started it.

Even so, Messenger of Truth was my favorite Maisie book yet. She got more human, more multi-faceted, in my opinion. She was tempted by friendship with Georgiana; that speaks of human weakness. She gets lonely. This has been one of my complaints about Maisie, that she lacks this human quality, so for me this developed her. We can see she’s still not ready for a romantic relationship, though. At least she’s now struggling with the question of it.

On the other hand, I’m also still enjoying the macro view of the world, if you will. Maisie and Billy have slightly different perspectives, but both are bothered by the haves vs. have-nots issue. In past books, discussion of the war and the post-war depression have given me a similarly satisfying treatment of the larger world. I want Maisie to be a real person; but I also like it when Winspear deals with these macro issues.

Here comes the SPOILER:










I was surprised that Winspear let Lizzie die! I guess I have to respect her for going whole hog. It’s realistic that she would die, I guess.

I still find the series interesting. I still look forward to seeing what’s going to happen to Maisie. I still intend to read book 3. :-/ But… there’s still something a bit… sanitized or somehow not entirely, grittily human about this series, for me. On the other hand, I like Maisie so much that I bought THIS!

see! my new cloche!


Call me Mad for Maisie 🙂

vacation reading: a series of short reviews

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Still a good story! Spooky and short, it’s a bit reminiscent of Poe. Action-packed and efficient. I would not have sworn I had read this before, but now I recognize that I have. What a classic. I highly recommend this as a bang-for-the buck, action-packed, early sci-fi spookster with a bit of meditation on the human condition. Not sure if I should count this for the Classics Challenge as its a re-read. :-/


Worth Dying For by Lee Child. (audiobook) Surprisingly good as audio. I wasn’t sure. I’m such a BOOK purist that audio doesn’t always work for me; but it can’t be argued with on a road trip. Part of what made it special, too, is that I got to share it with the Husband, who doesn’t normally read. He got really into it, and we shared this suspenseful adventure together. That’s priceless.

Classic Jack Reacher! He’s such a Rambo. It’s a bit comical in the over-the-top violence and general bad-ass-ness, but I eat it up. It’s great fun. We both enjoy the slight absurdity of it, while also appreciating that we can count on this guy to get it right. And I finally begin to understand, at least a little bit, what was so frustratingly up-in-the-air at the end of 61 Hours. This may be my favorite Reacher novel yet.


The Ballad of Typhoid Mary by J.F. Federspiel. Opening quotation: “Life is strange and the world is bad.” (Thomas Wolfe) This sets the tone.

This is another creepy story. It’s historical fiction, and I have made a note in large letters to read up on the concept of Typhoid Mary and how much we know about her in the real world. She was a carrier of typhoid fever: she never got sick herself, but she made people around her sick, to the tune of several hundred at least. She was a cook, passionate about cooking for people, despite seeming to understand that she was killing them. She wasn’t a serial killer; she didn’t do it on purpose; she just didn’t let it stop her. What can we expect, in an age with poor understanding of hygiene and the spreading of disease, of a poor, uneducated, abused & orphaned young woman with no opportunities who suspects she might, in some way, be responsible for all these deaths around her? This was a fascinating read, and another very short one, too.


The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.This is a collection of case studies, or short stories, or essays, by a neurologist who also fancies himself a philosopher with literary leanings. It was quite attention-grabbing, and I had to keep putting it down to tell the Husband stories. Reading about brain injuries or anomalies of the brain is infinitely more interesting to me since I had my bad wreck and experienced some brain injury and healing of my own. The most interesting thing about a number of these cases is that these patients often don’t realize that anything is wrong!

Sacks’s approach is to contemplate the relationship between mind, body, and soul, which perhaps too few of our hard scientists do. It still ended up a bit on the hard-science side for me, perhaps; he made a number of references (unexplained) to other hard scientists, which made it a bit less accessible to us laypersons. But I loved the stories, the concepts, possibilities, complexities of the human mind.


In the Woods by Tana French. I’ve been hankering for more of Tana French since reading Faithful Place. I really fell for that Frank Mackey! This one opens with immediately recognizable poetry-in-prose, stark, gritty, and strongly Irish. Then I was disappointed to recognize a familiar story: grown male detective forced to confront unsolved childhood trauma of missing friend(s). Argh! But I guess why mess with a good thing…

Oh man. I stayed up nearly all night to finish this book. (and this, in a place where I LIKE to get up to watch the sun rise!) Same story my head; it did have its plot similarities but it was so gripping and spooky, like a ghost story, except even spookier because there was nothing supernatural at all, just creepily realistic human nature. I can’t wait to get the next book!

Side note: the beautiful, tragic, doomed, perfect friendship reminded me somewhat of One Day by David Nicholls, which had an entirely different tone to it.


Echo Park by Michael Connelly. (audiobook)Another highly enjoy audiobook! This one unabridged, thank goodness. (I realized AFTER we listened to Worth Dying For that it was abridged, and now have to go back and read the book.) Connelly, for all that he’s sort of stark and black-and-white, also strikes me as a poet; I love that Bosch “educates” his ice with vodka. That’s unique! I’ve read this book before, but it’s been long enough that I still enjoyed the mystery. I like all the background or frame elements in Connelly, like the jazz (and I like that the Library of Congress, and some clever librarian there, make an appearance in relation to the jazz), and the audio format took advantage and gave us a few jazz riffs in the background here and there, which was a nice touch. I hadn’t really thought about using music on on audiobook, and actually, there were some other snippets of music added that I didn’t think worked so well; but jazz behind Connelly is a strong choice.


Whatever You Say I Am (the life and times of Eminem) by Anthony Bozza.I put this in the same category as the Hefner biography, actually. These are some highly controversial men, offensive to many if not to all, who have impacted our world; without making a value judgment, I can say I find them interesting to read about. My feelings about Eminem are complicated, just like with Hefner. (I was talking with my Pops the other night along these lines and we put Reagan in the same category but that’s a whole new can of worms.) I haven’t finished this book, am less than halfway through, but I can say I really enjoy the way Bozza puts his reader fully into a time and place. For example, to help place us in the year in which Eminem was working to release his first album, he gives us a full rundown of the musical hits and award winners of the year in various categories, as well as what movies and television were hot. Now, I’m not generally all that up to date on pop culture, but this worked for me; it really evoked a time in my life. I think that works for all of us, because isn’t sound or music second only to smell as a mnemonic? Doesn’t hearing a particular song take to you a time and place? At any rate, I’m enjoying this biographical study of a controversial figure.


And finally, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. As I’ve said, I’m enjoying reading Hemingway’s usual tone and style, that I know so well, used in journalism. I hadn’t read any of his journalism before. I guess the nonfiction I’ve read would be Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast, and then all that fiction that’s so heavily autobiographical. Any Hemingway I can get, I like.


I’ll keep you up to date on the books I still have to finish; and I have a few Maisie books waiting for me. I might finally be caught up!

Tuesday Teasers: Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


From page 120 of Jacqueline Winspear’s Birds of a Feather:

She was anxious to interview the housekeeper and be on her way back to Chelstone, to plan the next part of her visit to Kent. She was abundantly aware that the initial meeting with Joseph Waite had taken place almost a week ago, and she was not yet certain she had located her client’s daughter.

This is a fine portrayal of Maisie: a bit anxious and all business! Hopefully there’s some fun in her future, too.

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

This weekend I devoted myself to the second Maisie Dobbs novel. (See my notes on the first one here.) I am participating in the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along, although I’m doing a terrible job because I’m so LATE on each book. 😦 I am observing that I will continue to be LATE for at least the second and third books. Perhaps I will catch up on book four…

I am currently nearly finished with Birds of a Feather. We got to know Maisie in the first book: we learn her history as a young girl who loses her mother and goes to work as a servant; gets “discovered” for her intellect and tutored by her lifelong friend and mentor Maurice; goes to college; volunteers to nurse in the Great War; meets the love of her life and suffers tragedy. We learn of her relationships with her father, mentor Maurice, and patroness, if you will, the Lady Rowan. We also meet Billy Beale, who she hires as her assistant. In the second book, then, there is much less background to be covered, although it is sufficiently reviewed that a reader starting with book 2 will be just fine. Really, the review was a bit heavy-handed for me so recently after book 1, but I appreciate a series that can be begun in the middle, so I’ll be patient.

Maisie and Billy have undertaken another case, and operate as a team this time around, whereas in book 1, Billy took on an assistant’s role only late, and informally. Strangely, I don’t find the explain-it-to-the-assistant device to be natural or useful; I liked it better when Maisie just thought things to herself. These are lovely stories, and I love the time and place evoked so beautifully, and I like Maisie herself – plucky, smart, and caring, and with a satisfyingly complex backstory, relationships, and personal hang-ups. She’s very human. But I find myself frustrated, fairly often, with the way Winspear communicates some of her points; things tend to feel a bit forced. I think I want her to show more, and tell less. I still enjoy the books, but I am developing a hang-up. I guess I’m not explaining it perfectly, though, and will see if I can find a concrete example for you as I continue.

At any rate, there is much to like about the book. Billy is a wonderful addition, to the story as well as to Maisie’s life, and I really appreciate the way Winspear addresses substance abuse in the 1930’s. Maisie’s relationship with her father is another realistic device that I feel is well-done, like her problem with visiting Simon in book 1. The men in Maisie’s life in this book add a bit of fun that I hope we’ll continue; if I have a problem with Maisie, it’s definitely the lack of fun! A touch of romance along with mystery, history, evocative sense of place, and relationship dynamics makes for an enjoyable read, if it can just be done naturally.

I’m satisfied to continue reading Maisie Dobbs and discussing with the Book Club Girl. Maybe I’ll catch up one of these days… I expect to give you my end-of-book report tomorrow, and then I’ll venture over to the discussion to participate. For now, I’m avoiding plot spoilers.

Persuader by Lee Child

It’s an interesting world here in Houston these days. We are having completely abnormal weather: three nights in a row of hard freezes are just about unheard of. Our pipes froze the first night (we have learned some things since then) and yesterday afternoon, and today, businesses have closed, people have been sent home from work (or told not to come), and there has been some minor panicking over road conditions. The panic may have been a little over the top but then again, we have significant ice on the roads and many of us (many! including me) don’t know WHAT to do with that; there have been quite a few car accidents and apparently one traffic fatality. I think staying home sounds stellar, if possible. I am at work today. Ah well.

All of this did conspire to cancel all my plans and back-up plans last night, so I settled in instead to finish my latest Lee Child/Jack Reacher novel, Persuader. It was great! Just what I’m looking for from him, again. Usually Reacher has to be convinced to take up whatever cause is in question, but not this time. When the book opens he has recognized a sinister face from his past, and he’s already determined to involve himself in whatever this man may have going. We meet some unusually friendly, likeable, cooperative federal agents (usually he butts heads with these folks) and he heads into an elaborate set-up. It’s good juicy action that engages from the first page. And unlike my last Reacher read, it ends satisfyingly. Reacher finds the holy grail, makes a love connection and disentangles from it in the same breath, gets a new set of clothes, and walks into the sunset. Or the sunrise; he likes to leave his destination up in the air, after all.

This was just the kind of quick, adrenaline-packed, comforting couch read I was looking for. Ah, what a delicious night at home with the Husband and the two dogs. Today I’m straight into the next read, Birds of a Feather, in an attempt to catch up with the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along. Soon, though, I intend to get into some classics for the Classics Challenge; I have some set aside. What a lovely world!

book beginnings on Friday: Birds of a Feather

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I finished Lee Child’s Persuader last night (great fun, yay!) and will post about it shortly. So this morning, while waiting for road conditions to improve (yes we get a bit wussy in Houston when the whole world ices over and it stays below freezing for days. we get wussy because this NEVER HAPPENS and so we don’t know what to do when it does), I got to start a new book!

Unfortunately I’m behind in the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along, but I picked up book 3 along with book 2, so maybe I can catch up. Today’s book beginning comes from book 2, Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear.

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder. She took up green marble-patterned W.H. Smith fountain pen and inscribed the cover with the name of her new clients: Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Johnson, who were concerned that their son’s fiancee might have misled them regarding her past.”

Did you find the missing word? I did, and I found it jarring, especially RIGHT at the beginning like this. What a shame! Professionally published books should NOT include typos, but in the first two sentences… it troubles me. If anyone were going to catch a typo you’d think they could catch the one in the second sentence of the book!

Aside from this, it’s a perfectly nice beginning. We have some detail to hint to us about Maisie’s organizational habits, and a fairly strong hint as to her line of work. I am interested in revisiting her. What will she encounter this time? Are the typos just beginning?

Teaser Tuesdays: Persuader by Lee Child


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Duffy wanted me to move into the hotel and offered to have somebody drive me back to my Boston hotel for my luggage. I told her I didn’t have any luggage and she looked at me sideways but didn’t say anything.

From page 38 of Lee Child’s Persuader. Standard Reacher behavior – and I love that there’s a “she” already. Reacher doesn’t consummate his flings the way Connelly’s character Bosch tends to, but there’s always an attractive (and generally also very tough) woman around. I’m looking forward to the ease of reading a fast-paced Reacher thriller for the next few days!

book beginnings on Friday

I shall optimistically post a Book Beginning today, in the hopes that I will soon be able to Begin a new Book.


I’m struggling with which of the four books on my desk to choose for my Next. Let’s see. There’s a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, Persuader (great title for Reacher, I think!), set in Maine (this is important for the sake of the Where Are You Reading? Challenge). I like Reacher very much; this is tempting. It would be “light” after this clunker nonfiction that I’m currently involved in, hm.

Next there’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, an oft-mentioned classic (thus good for the Classics Challenge, hm) that I’ve never read and know that I Should.

Then comes By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. This is required reading for me because I’m a huge, huge fan of Hemingway, and this is one I have NOT read – I’ve read all his novels and I THINK all his short stories although it’s hard to figure out for sure considering all the various collections; but only a few of his nonfiction. This is a collection of his journalism, and the back of the book claims that “more intimately than all his fiction, Hemingway the reporter reveals Hemingway the man.” I need it.

And finally we have The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. This caught my eye because Eva over at A Striped Armchair was just recently extolling the author and specifically this book. It’s sort of pop-science in a series of case studies by neurologist Sacks. I’m intrigued, all the more so by Eva’s glowing praise. I’ve discovered a handful of pop-science/medical, very readable nonfiction in recent years, like My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. This one might be up next.

This is not a very successful book beginning post just yet. With which should I tease you, and me?

Let’s try this again.


Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme.

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

From the first page of Lee Child’s Persuader:

“The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance.”

This is so like Child. Everything is exact. I love it. What’s Reacher gotten himself into this time?

Thanks for bearing with my messy post this evening. 🙂 Have a lovely weekend and I’ll “see” you on Monday!

A few new books: sci fi, and a Houston Heights mystery

Well! I know I’ve been a bit distant (and boring, since I’ve been reading the same book for what feels like weeks!) but I have some new tidbits to share.

Still very busy with my exciting Database Searching class and the rest of life, but I have cheated on Mr. Playboy and read a few other quick bits.

The other night I sat down and read my friend Amy Sisson’s Suicide Club, published in Sybil’s Garage No. 7, a collection of sci fi short stories. Now, you will recall that I do not consider myself a reader of sci fi. I actually really enjoyed Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, which I read for a reader’s advisory class last fall; it just didn’t strike me as what I think of as sci fi. It was a story about people, relationships, morals, and worlds; it didn’t geek me out with computer bits or robots or things like that. (I’m not up for that.) Well, this is the second of Amy’s short stories I’ve read, and both have been very accessible – no geeking out, again. Maybe I need to rethink sci fi. I’m still not up for the geeky stuff, but apparently there’s more to the genre than that. Although she did point out a collection of Star Trek stories, including one of hers, that she told me I would *not* like (and I still haven’t braved it.) Amy? Any recommendations for further reading? I enjoyed Suicide Club; it gave an interesting and yes, decidedly creepy take on our future, spinning off of Fight Club. (Kind of fun along with being creepy.) I enjoyed the other worldview. Thank you Amy! 🙂

Next I began reading a short mystery I was given a few months back. It came as one of two Houston Heights historical mysteries, and they’re by a local Heights author, Anne Sloan. (For those who aren’t local, the Heights is a neighborhood in Houston, and at the time the books are set, was a suburb. It’s an artsy, historic, trendy neighborhood marked by old families in houses for generations, but also young people, dog walkers, runners, cyclists, bars, beautiful old houses, and well-maintained historical structures in general.) I’m reading the first one, called Murder on the Boulevard; next is The Apothecary’s Demise. This book is set in the 1910’s, in a time when Houston (3 miles away from the suburb of Houston Heights) is just developing; Jesse Jones is in the process of building the 18-story Rice Hotel. Times are a-changing. Our protagonist, Flora Logan, is an adamant women’s suffragist and general feminist. She falls out permanently with her father, for example, over her opinion that she should be allowed to study and pursue a career rather than aspire to marriage as her loftiest goal. Her interest in study and career is botany, and we get some good local, historical details there, too.

Flora leaves Houston for New York City after her parental conflict, and finds a more equal environment, a college degree, and a job in the Botanical Gardens there; she is called home when her father dies suddenly, and begins investigating what looks like his murder. (Given the title, perhaps we can take that for granted.) I’m maybe 3/4 through this book, and despite early misgivings, I’m enjoying myself. It should probably be said that this book is not a feat of literary accomplishment or crime novel styling, although it does adequately well at the latter. Its greater achievement is in historical detail, which here and there is a little bit too obviously wrought, but really I think we all have a weakness for our home town/city/neighborhood in fiction… I have lived in the Heights and currently live very close (in another beautiful historic neighborhood), and anyone from inner-loop Houston could appreciate the familiarity of the landmarks described and their history. It’s very enjoyable, it’s just not… poetic. It makes me want to go look at each building again with new eyes; it makes me proud to be part of this heritage.

And the mystery is developing nicely. We may have started a bit slowly with Flora’s doomed trip to the Big Thicket near Beaumont (another familiar area!) but the intrigue is fun; her characters are either likeable, or not (meaning Sloan successfully convinces us of who the villains are!), and I’m engaged in what seems to be a burgeoning romance. (Flora is an extra challenge because her feminism makes her resistant and suspicious. This is a “type” I daresay we’re all familiar with, at least in fiction, past and present.)

So with a few stumbles, I’m really liking this Houston Heights mystery. And I get to put a pin on my map for the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, too! 🙂

I’m looking forward to maybe finally finishing Mr. Playboy this weekend – I’m not bored with the book, in fact I’m still fascinated and still convinced that I was *right* that Hefner is a fascinating and contradictory guy! – but I’m a bit bored with being in one book for this long. I’m ready to move on, and I have some tasty books waiting for me in stacks on my desks (yes plural, work and home), yum. So perhaps on Monday I’ll have some new books to report on again! Til then, thanks for stopping by.

61 Hours and Mr. Playboy

Ack! So sorry it’s taken me this long! See what a three-day weekend does for me? No, I didn’t mean it, don’t take them away. It was a GREAT three-day weekend. Yesterday was a stellar day on the mountain bike trails up north (didn’t see another soul!) followed by a sushi pig-out with the Husband, ahhhhh, lovely.

So I just had a hard time catching up today, and I’m sorry this post is so late. I do have things to tell you.

I finished Lee Child’s 61 Hours this weekend, and it was everything I want a Lee Child/Jack Reacher book to be. It was fast-paced and exciting and suspenseful, with a good mystery that I solved myself this time (although I doubted in the final moments, I confess). Reacher was a superman and I was impressed and it was great fun. BUT! I was totally dissatisfied with the ending. It was far too up-in-the-air; I need greater satisfaction than that, greater resolution. I don’t think people read page-turner head-bashing mysteries to be left up in the air; I think we like conclusion! Without spoiling, I hope, let’s say it leaves Reacher’s fate decidedly in question. Luckily I know that the next Reacher book is already out, so either he survives or is reincarnated. That saves Child from some of my frustration. But really, if he were reading this: Mr. Child, you do such a good job. Next time do go ahead and tell us what happened! Ah well, this will just get me into the next one all that quicker. Perhaps this was his aim all along.

Next I started reading Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts. This one has a due date at the big library where I don’t work, so I thought I’d go ahead and get started. Also, it’s a bit of a brick – close to 600 pages, only 450ish of which is the book itself (lots of notes, not a bad sign with a biography).

And it was easy to get into! I observed in last Friday’s book beginning that it had a strong start; seemed readable (what a drag to have to force oneself to follow really dry nonfiction, you know what I’m talking about) and also seemed to approach the subject in the way I was hoping. I’m reading a Hefner biography because I find him a fascinating character: complex, and polarizing, and prolific in his influences. I’m pretty clear that I do admire him, but I know he’s complicated and suspect that not everything about him is admirable. So, I’m looking for a biography to help me understand these complexities.

And I think I’ve found it! First of all, it does turn out to be a very readable book. I sat down and got through 125ish pages in one sitting, which means that by the second sitting I’m more than a third of the way through this brick. That’s an endorsement. I also appreciate Watts’ approach; he’s working to place Hefner in the larger forces guiding the US and all the ways in which our culture was changing during Hefner’s youth. I’m still dealing with the early years of Playboy magazine, barely scraping 1960, so there’s plenty to come. We’re getting to know a number of the characters in his life and in the Playboy commercial empire. I find it plenty entertaining. I like learning about Hefner’s intricacies and contradictions. If you’re looking for a Hefner biography I would recommend this one so far.

It’s a beautiful day because I got up and rode my bike before work this morning. Here’s to pleasurable reading and rain-free mornings to ride. 🙂 I’ll be back more reliably to you tomorrow; til then, enjoy!