The Meandering Reader

Friday, August 5, 2022

Hello, Molly!: A Memoir by Molly Shannon, Sean Wilsey

I've been on an autobiography kick lately and enjoyed all of them, especially when the authors read them on the audiobook version. This book is definitely worth listening to.

Molly Shannon started performing at a young age. Not on the stage, per se, but with other children. It was one way to control her life after her family was in a car accident when she was four and her mother, sister, and cousin all died. There was a lot left out of Shannon's relationship with her father and enough information to know that she had a hard time while growing up.

We learn about her going to school and really getting into acting, having to scramble in both New York and Los Angeles before finally landing her role on Saturday Night Live.

There isn't much on her life post-SNL but I get the feeling that she hasn't had as much time process that as she has her early life.

Four stars

This book came out April 12, 2022

Borrowed as audiobook from Libby

Opinions are my own

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen

Zoey grew up with a much older father and a volatile mother. Right after they divorced, her mother died and, when Zoey's father remarried, there was no room left for her. But it's okay, because she's going to Mallow Island, to the studio apartment her mother left to her. It's part of a small apartment complex that was bought and refurbished by an author, Roscoe Avanger, who is best known for his book about the Island. He only had one big hit but it was big enough that he could buy several properties and set himself up for the rest of his life.

The first night Zoey is there, one of the other tenants, Lizbeth Lime, dies, buried under hundreds of copies of Roscoe's books. Her death, and Zoey being asked by the property manager to go through the hoarding of printed pages that Lizbeth left behind, sets off a series of events where the other tenants, Charlotte, Mac, and Lucy, will start to intertwine. Before, Lizbeth kept them separated by spying on them all and making everyone stay indoors.

Lots of magical realism in this book up to and including Zoey's invisible bird but woven into the story. The near ending was a little too much but this book is just another reason to really enjoy anything Addison Allen writes.

Four stars

This book came out August 30, 2022

Borrowed as ebook from Libby

Opinions are my own

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Books are often said to create new worlds, but what if maps could as well? Nell Young is struggling with that question. Years ago, her father threw her out of his office over a gas station map. It was stunning because she had lost her mother at a young age and her father had raised her. And he had raised her to love maps. So why would he distance himself over this one?

Now, her father has died under mysterious circumstances and Nell finds that same map hidden in his office. Why? And she's off on an adventure that will have her uniting a group of friends formed in college but who haven't been together in a long, long time. We see the formation and dissolution of that group in first person flashbacks.

Not every voice is unique which makes it sometimes hard to read but this is a whimsical book that lets you escape into its own world for a little while.

Four stars

This book came out March 15, 2022

Borrowed as ebook from Libby

Opinions are my own

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

Though this is the second book in a series, my book club assured me I need not have read the first and they were absolutely correct. A fabulous book about retirees solving crimes. A little darker than I was expecting but overall a delight.

The Thursday Murder Club, consisting of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim, is getting back together. A series of subplots are delightfully woven together by Osman using all four of these characters as well as local police partners Donna and Chris. Donna and Chris are working on trying to take down a local drug lord. One of her runners decides to take a swing at Ibrahim who is just figuring out how vast the world is. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is struggling as her past, both personal and professional, comes back, even while her husband's dementia is getting worse.

Four stars

This book came out

Follows The Thursday Murder Club

Followed by The Bullet that Missed

Borrowed as audiobook from Libby

Opinions are my own

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Ruth Kettering is unhappy. She didn't marry her first love, her millionaire father ran him off. But her current husband seems to be no better, flaunting his affairs, running through her money. Even the fabulous, though possibly cursed, necklace that her father gifts her doesn't make her happy. She boards a train to the Riviera anyway but doesn't survive the trip. Her father hires Hercule Poirot to figure out what, exactly, happened.
A lot of the story is told from the third person limited narration focusing on Katherine Grey. Miss Grey has long been a companion and has inherited a tidy sum from her last employer. She is on the same train and actually interacts with Ruth.
An interesting story but not as fairly clued as many in the Christie ouvre.

Three and a half stars

This book came out March 29, 1928

Follows The Big Four

Followed by The Underdog and Other Stories

Borrowed as audiobook from Hoopla

Opinions are my own

Monday, August 1, 2022

Zinnia by Jayne Castle

Zinnia Spring's life hasn't been going real great lately. Her parents died, her family is pressuring her academic brother into being CEO of the family corporation, and then a wealthy husband and wife set her up as his mistress to cover up their menage a trois resulting in Zinnia being branded the "Scarlet Lady." And now, trying to track down a matrix talent she's held the focus for (her prism is well suited for matrix talents), she encounters a psychic vampire.

Nick Chastain is a powerful matrix talent but not a psychic vampire. Even if. He did sort of "jump" Zinnia's prism on the psychic plane. Luckily, she works past it (pretty fast, actually) and is able to work with him not only to figure out what happened to her original matrix, but to discover what happened to his father... a decades old murder.

Better than the first book in the series, Castle starts to find her rhythm in her new world.

Three stars

This book came out May 1, 1998

Follows Amaryllis

Followed by Orchid

Audiobook from Audible

Opinions are my own