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Title: Winterkill

Author: Ragnar Jónasson

Rating: ★★★★☆

Series: Dark Iceland

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This is the first book I've read in Ragnar Jónasson's #DarkIceland series, but is the 6th in the series, and I think it's actually the last. It was reasonably engaging and ultimate okay.

The detective is Ari Thór in a small Icelandic ski town, Siglufjörður, which is a real small Icelandic town (home of The Herring Era Museum, and where one of my favourite Nordic Noir tv series, Ófærð, was filmed). Without any spoilers, the primary death is a possible suicide, there's a redrum moment where a nursing home resident writes "She was murdered" over and over again on his bedroom wall - and reading it has the vibe of an SVU episode, with an SVU-esque ending.

Which is not a bad thing at all. The reveal to the main mystery was just okay for me and it's more or less solved by a witness basically telling him the main clue, but this was tempered by a side mystery solving which made it a little more satisfying. The lead detective Ari Thór isn't annoying, and I don't care for his personal life but it isn't detailed such that it gets in the way of the story.

I was hoping there would be more of a mystery puzzle, this is more of an investigation type mystery than a Poirot. However it's engaging enough, and I think it's a good book to relax with - much like an SVU episode. The story takes place over Easter but I felt it was a good choice for this long Christmas weekend.

spoilers under the cut:

I'm reassured that all the non-perp adult characters viewed the 19 year old victims as children and schoolgirls, and they're positioned as such in the novel's POV. Credit to the author for not sexualising them or assigning equal blame with the perp.

The side murder was slightly more satisfying because:

a) it was based on mysterious scrawlings and I have a preference for that (also letters, conversation snippets, etc.),

b) Ari Thór had to recognise that there was a murder and figure out who was murdered, although that's reasonably straightforward

But there wasn't that much payoff honestly. It's a littl disappointing that the main death was a suicide after the promise of "but surely, there's no other prints and no one else could possibly have been there!" which buoyed me up for more of a locked room mystery.

The ending was a little too SVU-esque. As soon as the vic's mother phoned him up sounding all rattled, I knew it was because she killed the perp. But I guess it provides closure, or something.

Overall, it was okay for me. I would read more from the series.

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Title: The Plague Court Murders

Author: John Dickson Carr

Rating: ★★★★☆

Series: A Henry Merrivale mystery

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The Plague Court Murders is a classic locked-room mystery by the King of locked rooms mysteries, John Dickson Carr.

A man is stabbed to death in a small stone building with a tiny high window. The room is barred from the inside and padlocked. There's a chimney, but there's a huge fire in the fireplace. There's fresh mud around the building but no footprints.

However it's also a self aware locked room mystery, and references the impossibility of the crime a few times:

The person who planned this crime planned it exactly like a detective-story...but that locked-room situation is too rounded and complete...a deliberate puzzle for us, says Henry Merrivale,

and, in the exposition, he says:

the fundamental trouble with the locked-room situation is that it generally ain't reasonable

So it knows. The mystery knows, that ostensibly, there's no logical way someone could enter, stab, leave.

Which brings me to what I'm unhappy with. The actual solution is a bit convoluted for me. While you could look at the statements and conversations throughout the text and kind of figure out who's lying (and thus guilty in some way), solving part of the mechanism of murder seems to require the specialist knowledge of Sir Henry Merrivale.

Otherwise it's an excellent mystery, especially for the Halloween season. It's set in a crumbling haunted manor known ominously as Plague Court, there's a seance, and the victim is a spiritualist who's been commissioned to exorcise the spirit of Louis Playge, a hangman's assistant from the time of the Black Death, from the house.

The atmosphere is very spooky and it feels like a great classic mystery. There's people in disguise, people in cahoots, people throwing shade at each other. There's three detective-type characters, and all of them seem reasonably competent, though of course only one of them is the uber-detective the other two consult: Henry Merrivale, and he detects mostly by sitting and thinking, which is my preferred type of detection. Honestly it's the type of mystery that can only be set in a pre-DNA testing past: with fingerprinting and DNA detection and other modern scientific methods, the mystery becomes elementary.

Overall I recommend it as a great mystery choice for spooky season that presents a murder that looks truly impossible!

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Title: The Diva Runs out of Thyme

Author: Krista Davis

Rating: ★★★★☆

Series: The Domestic Diva Mysteries

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This was the Cozy Mystery Book Club pick for August. I really enjoyed it!

I like the main character Sophie, who seems like a mature and sensible adult. I also like that it appears to be food themed (this book is Thanksgiving turkey themed), and all the food sounds delicious, with the customary recipes in the back of the book.

Well to be more accurate, the theme is 'domestic diva': Sophie is an event planner and her friend/'rival' Natasha is a Martha Stewartesque TV personality, and each chapter starts off with a bit of relevant domesticky advice from the Advice Columns of Sophie or Natasha, which I found quite amusing.

Another thing I like is that pretty much anyone seemed to be the potential murderer. Pretty much all the characters seemed to have means and motive, and for some reason, always together. Everyone seemed suspicious to me and I totally pinpointed the wrong person.

I've been really busy with my new job(s) in July and August as well as doing a cycling challenge, and only got around to reading this book this weekend. I found it relaxing and easy and quick to read. None of the characters annoyed me and they all seemed pleasant enough. The town didn't really make a strong impression of coziness on me, but the neighbours sure are neighbourly to the point they always seem to be at (or skulking around) the protagonist's house. I wouldn't mind reading more of this series.

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Murder in the Mystery Suite

Title: Murder in the Mystery Suite

Author: Ellery Adams

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Series: A Book Retreat Mystery

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It's my own fault entirely for choosing this book based on the cover. I saw a cottage, a cat, and what resembles a Pashley Princess Sovereign (dream bicycle) - scanned the blurb (murder, Murder Mayhem week, book hotel), and was sold.

This reads a little like an Enid Blyton book for adults. It's very twee. It's set in rural Virginia, but reads for all the world like it was set in a 1930s rural English village from a children's storybook, composed of sweetshops, bookshops and neighbourly ladies. It comes across as more fantastical than charming.

The book-hotel where protagonist Jane Steward lives and the murders take place. It's a vast manor-turned-hotel plucked out of her (and I quote) 'ancestral seat' in England and plopped in the middle of Virginia, and it seems, staffed with British people. They have tea at three o'clock with scones and 'Devonshire' cream, a chauffeur that drives them around in a Rolls Royce, a butler, and a cook who is basically a one-person catering company. Almost everyone speaks in an elaborate way and drops literary allusions.

The plot is that this Manor-Book-Hotel needs to rustle up some funds, and in order to do this they hold a Murder-and-Mayhem week in which paying guests dress up as famous detectives and do things like play croquet and eat sandwiches. As this is a murder mystery novel, several people die for real and their deaths must be investigated by the protagonist (and the household staff, but more about this later). Strangely, for a Murder-and-Mayhem week, there is no fake murder game. Instead there are mystery themed cocktails, literary named food items, etc. which seems both fun and tacky, by which I mean, yes I would happily go to a place that serves Mark Twain chicken biscuits along with iced tea and lemonade, but we must all acknowledge that it sounds like a terrible tourist trap.

So now I reiterate that the protagonist and her household staff investigate this murder, and this is where there's an incredible, ridiculous twist in the story, which I won't divulge in its entirety but I must warn you about: they amount to some kind of secret order of book warriors, replete with secret tunnels and weapons. I'm not happy with it, ie. I'm not going to read more books in the series, but, well, it's a valid plot.

The mystery itself is a little convoluted, and the characters are a little shallow, but there are many of them. The murder mechanism is incredible, but at the point you learn about it, you've already had to shelve all sense of reality. Ultimately, it reminds me of a children's book but for adults, like an Enid Blyton as mentioned earlier, with the same sort of devoted household staff, cream teas, hearty boy children, robust aunts, kindly village shopkeepers, and rolling hills of England - but in Virginia.

So would I recommend this? Well probably not, but yes if you have the right fetishes and wish to read it for twee bookly atmosphere. I rate it 2 stars, mostly to reward it for the chutzpah for turning what seems like a cozy into a book about a librarian warrior clan, and shameless Anglophilia.

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Bikequity: Money, Class, and Bicycling

Title: Bikequity: Money, Class, and Bicycling

Author: Various. Edited by Elly Blue

Rating: ★★★★★

Series: Taking the Lane zine

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This is a collection of different essays, plus a poem and a short fiction piece that relate to class, race, etc. in cycling. And there's a recipe at the back. Strictly speaking, this is the 14th issue of a zine called Taking The Lane.

What I like is that it covers a range of different 'otherings' : cycling while black, Asian, Latinx, fat, cycling with little money to more money, employed and not, the desire for bike lanes and other bike infrastructure but also acknowledging that, in many places, they're a sign of gentrification, and just "how bike lanes are not enough", and there are larger issues when you're talking about improving mobility for everyone. An essay about living with 'voluntary simplicity' is followed by one about someone's journey to the point in their life where they're riding an expensive folding bike, and I empathised and identified with both of them. In this collection, everyone's cycling story is valid and celebrated.

I suspect I also like it partly because I'm secretly pretty nosy and like to read about other people's lives, and since cycling around is my new hobby, I want to read about how other people are cycling around. I wish there were more blogs where people talk about cycling around in their lives.

If you're interested in other people's lives and/or cycling, you'll like this.

My favourite three essays are :

- Founding CicLAvia by Adonia Lugo, which is about starting CicLAvia, a cycling event in LA inspired by Ciclavia in Colombia,

- Bicycle Karma by Rebecca Fish Ewan, which is about, I guess, the bikes in her life, and contains a quote I like:

I wouldn't have had the courage to go where my life has gone, we're it not for the bikes in my life. They set me free without costing more than I could afford. This is how I think the world should work.

- Us, Them, and the Imposter Within by Cat Caparello, which is kind of about being an overweight woman cycling and 'cyclist' identity (because I too am an overweight woman on a bitty cycle),

...but all the essays are interesting, and as a whole it's easy to read, varied, thought provoking, uplifting.

(The recipe at the end is for a brownie. I haven't made it yet. It looks good.)

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Horrorstör

Title: Horrorstör

Author: Grady Hendrix

Rating: ★★★★☆

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Horrorstör is a fun book. The Haunted Ikea theme appeals to me, the writing is engaging and proceeds at a good pace, I like and sympathise with all the characters (except, obviously, the sadistic chief ghost antagonist).

It starts out very creepy and Poltergeisty, with Orsk (the haunted Ikea-inspired store) employees wandering around it after closing time, investigating the strange occurrences. The strange occurrences are definitely off putting and weird you out.

I like the book design, which feels like an Ikea catalogue, with the product names and all. The products become increasingly twisted as the book goes on.

I think part of why it works so well is that most readers will know how an Ikea-type store feels, and how disorienting it can be, so anomalous phenomena stand out immediately. Similarly, the story uses tropes we immediately understand: cursed land, old timey torture asylum.

The element that detracted from my enjoyment was that after the disconcerting setup, at the midpoint it turns into a kind of extended chase scene with the Orsk employee trying to escape the torture ghosts. I think it would be great as a movie, or if they pad it out as a TV show, like a season of American Horror Story or something, but it makes the book feel a lot less substantial.

I like the ending. It isn't a perfect resolution but in its own way it's feelgood. The ending feels realistic for the setting and characters.

Do I recommend this? Very definitely yes. It's entertaining and easy to read - I read it in less than 2 hours in one sitting.

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The Taking of Annie Thorne / The Hiding Place

Title: The Taking of Annie Thorne / The Hiding Place

Author: CJ Tudor

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

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This book is basically Pet Sematary, but not as good, like a knockoff Pet Sematary. The plot is more or less the same: just like Pet Sematary the horror element is dead people and animals rising horribly wrong when they're laid to rest in a specific corner of town, but it plays out in a depressing little ex-mining town 'up North' (North of England). It also, somehow, revolves a bit around schoolyard bullying, which comes up as a recurring theme in British thrillers.

So you might be thinking: Yes, it might be awkwardly similar to Pet Sematary, but I loved that book and wouldn't mind reading another. I mean, we do watch basically the same Hallmark movie, just with different accessories tacked on, but for me the book just isn't good enough to be enjoyable as a variation on the theme.

I don't like the writing style. I think there's an overuse of metaphors and sometimes the cadence almost sounds like a Dragnet parody, eg:

People say time is a great healer. They're wrong. Time is simply a great eraser.

Honestly I think it would have read better in a plainer, more straightforward way.

The characters aren't likeable (at least, I didn't like them), and feel kind of flat.

The reason why the protagonist is even in this town in the first place is a little convoluted, like it's tacked on to justify facilitating this Pet Sematary in the mines scenario.

It does read quickly though, so there's that.

So why did I finish this? Honestly I kept reading with the hope the plot would become better, that the ending would be more satisfying. I'm willing to overlook writing style for content, but it didn't quite work out here.

Do I recommend this? Yeah no. Read Pet Sematary instead.

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Such A Fun Age

Title: Such A Fun Age

Author: Kiley Reid

Rating: ★★★★☆

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I dont know why I thought this would be one of those thriller novels where some bourgeois suburban lady's kid gets kidnapped. I think because it was a Reese's Book Club pick, but also that the blurb says something like: one night! A babysitter was accused of kidnapping her employer's kid! - And so I assumed.

Yeah it's not that at all. The story is about Emira, who does get accused of kidnapping her employer's kid by a highly prejudiced shopper and escalated by an asshole security guard, in some local version of Whole Foods. This happens in the first part, and the night I read it I had a nightmare about a receptionist at a Barry's type workout studio being very passive aggressively hostile to me. It was very detailed and very real and I got scared of the book and didnt pick it up for like a week, when it was almost due and was gonna check itself out of my Libby.

I finished it in a few hours on Friday. It's a very readable book. It reads easily, it's engaging, it's really good. Here are some of my thoughts (with spoilers):

I have to confess that the other protagonist, Alix, turned me off almost immediately, although I also understood her anxieties and sympathised with her. However I was suspicious of her from the beginning and didn't trust the sections with her point of view. This very likely coloured my reading of the book, so at the end I was like, Yeah, of course.

I feel bad that Emira can't keep doing the job she's actually good at and enjoys, because it offers no room for monetary progression and sadly could also mean replicating historical sockal hierarchies and is, culturally at least, a subservient role. I also think it's okay to just work to fund the rest of your life, and feel bad that people kept pushing her to define herself by some kind of career goal. Most jobs are kinda bullshit anyway, let's be real.

I like that she worked for the Green Party, and of course Alix's first instinct would be to consider it a personal attack.

I dropped a star for the book because some of the side characters fell a bit flat for me, particularly Tamra. I just don't get Tamra, why was she so weird and asked all those awkward intrusive questions. Emira's friends are sketched out just enough they feel a little like extras, and the other women Alix interacts with kind of feel like stereotypes, but then I consider that we see them through Alix's pov and that is probably just how she sees the world, through a kinda self absorbed lens.

I really like the ending! I'm glad Emira's life proceeds okay and she makes reasonable life decisions. I also think it's a realistic ending - Emira realising that Briar will eventually forget her, that Briar grows up with the same privileges as her mother, that none of them have anything to do with each other anymore, is a sensible and satisfying conclusion for me.

Do I recommend this? Yes, very much so! It's not a perfect book, but it's easy to read, and I think it's a good portrayal of more middle class race issues, particularly about wealthy liberal white people, and the assumptions we have about each other and the roles we play out in society according to the identities we believe we've carved out for ourselves and would like to portray to the world. Should your book club read this? This is a perfect book club book! It's written in two different womens' voices, with lots of things to dissect and discuss.

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Deathless Divide

Title: Deathless Divide

Author: Justina Ireland

Rating: ★★★★★

Series: Dread Nation

—

“The world naturally trends towards injustice, and it is colored folks who bear the brunt of that.”

—

This is the sequel to Dread Nation.

If you haven’t read that, it’s fine because she briefly recaps necessary background information for you to follow the plot, but I really encourage you to read the first book.

I was looking forward to this so much after finishing Dread Nation. At the end of Dread Nation, I thought I had some kind of idea of what this book was gonna be like, but I was wrong! It was so much better: more exciting, more adventurous, more unexpected!

Plot-wise, it felt strangely apropos to read this in the midst of a pandemic and a powerful resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. The protagonists deal with race in the post-civil-war-era while trying to survive in the midst of a zombie pandemic, and also have to contend with a tunnel-vision amoral scientist searching for a vaccine through less-than-ethical means.

They do ‘head out West’ but like, something really shocking happens in the middle of the book that came out of nowhere for me, and I was like, what! Many, many unexpected things happen throughout the book, that I can’t really tell you the summary of the plot beyond ’they head West’ because anything would be a spoiler. There’s quite a lot of combat but not combat divorced from emotion and the personal repercussions that a life of fighting and killing has.

The book’s narrative switches between chapters with Katherine’s point of view and with Jane’s, which I think is really effective to show their very different experiences of the world - and that difference is due, at least in part, to Katherine’s ability to pass as white. The author also shows ethnic conflict/interactions beyond black and white, particularly with the Latinx and Chinese communities in California.

The ending in particular is satisfying.

I also have to mention that although this isn’t specifically a book about being LGBTQ+, some of the characters are in non-straight relationships and I felt it was appropriate to read in Pride month.

Age-wise, this is a YA book, but I think it’s just as engaging for adult readers. Although this technically seems like it would fall under the historical and horror categories, I think it actually feels like an adventure or Western type book, with a lot of sword and gun fighting, and a large part of this book is a journey to California, and a wagon journey through the West.

I chose the quote at the top because it’s a subversion of a quote by MLK “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (here is a good article about the quote), that I thought succinctly illustrates the experience that the characters have with the world.

Do I recommend this? Yes! For your bookclub? Why not? I recommend this for everyone!

[mymurderbooks]

In Paris

Title: In Paris

Author: Jeanne Damas and Lauren Bastide

Rating: ★★★★☆

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I'm not sure how to rate this book. First I'll explain what this book is:

It's a coffeetable fashion book comprising of pictures and profiles of women from Paris. Who they are, why they came to Paris/how they grew up in Paris, their neighbourhoods, what they do and how they got to doing it. Each profile is brief, about three (electronic) pages. The photography is lovely.

For photography and feeling, I feel I can fairly give it 4 stars.

The women are diverse : different ages from 14 to older, different ethnicities, born French and not, different (creative) occupations. They're all cool, all very Parisienne and all very fashion - which I expected, this book is by Jeanne Damas of fashion label Rouje and Lauren Bastide of Elle and the podcast La Poudre.

Ultimately it's a coffeetable fashion lifestyle book not a sociological study on women in Paris, but at this point in time it's reassuring and almost nostalgic, like looking back into how life used to be, when we could go to farmer's markets and go see music and have a drink in The Outside. In a way it's twenty idealised visions of a woman's Parisian life, in a stylish apartment, maybe with a pet, cafés, the appropriate literature and politics etc. etc. and this book crystallises it. (Bonus: for the bookstagrammers Syvia Whitman, proprietor of Shakespeare and Company, is featured.)

Do I recommend this book? If you nurse a Parisian fantasy in your heart, yes. There's lists of recommended places in Paris, where to go, what to eat, where to buy flowers, even how to politicise your life like a Parisienne (amongst other things, read bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir, watch Catherine Corsini's Summertime, listen to La Poudre), who to follow on social media, so if you wanted to plan a trip to Paris and Parisienise your life in quarantine in the meantime, it's a nice book to read. I suggest to first look through it if you can from the library - it might not be substantial enough to have more permanently in your life.

I have to admit that I do want a copy on my bookshelf, and I probably will get a hardcopy. One thing I noticed is it made me feel positive about being a childless 30-something in a small apartment in the city and freelancing, doing misc creative things etc. and reading it I feel more validated as an adult, at a time when many of my peers have corporate (or teaching) jobs and are birthing children. Sadly representations of older women independently enjoying life on their own terms still aren't that common. Although I think this book holds little concrete practical advice for adult women, it's nice and picturesque to browse and it peps me up a little. I think it also appeals to me because, although I have a realistic conception of French politics in these last few years, I still harbour idealised images of 'Paris', and have had some lovely times in France. I think that having lived in London until recently meant that I took being able to get to Paris easily and cheaply a little for granted, and now regret that the pandemic means that the era of weekends in Paris is likely over.

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Dread Nation

Title: Dread Nation

Author: Justina Ireland

Rating: ★★★★★

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"We can either die peacefully or survive by any means necessary."

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I loved Dread Nation and have been looking forward to the sequel, Deathless Divide, which I managed to borrow from the library today. So I've finally got around to reviewing Dread Nation.

The premise is this: the dead started rising at Gettysburg, and the newly 'freed' people of colour got involuntarily enlisted to slay shamblers. The story follows Jane (our protagonist) and Katherine (school frenemy turned comrade and friend), teenage girls enrolled at a zombie fighting school, Miss Preston's School.

Without revealing spoilers, they are sent to a new outpost in the west, Summerland, where they are forced to defend settlers against the shamblers. Poorly equipped, it looks like they will meet the inevitable doom that comes to all shambler-fighting girls: to be shambler chow and in turn become shamblers themselves.

But of course our heroes survive - to live on in the sequel!

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It's a post Civil War Reconstruction-era zombie fighting horror, but the real bad guy is white supremacy. Katherine is white passing, so colourism is also dealt with. I like the girls' friendship arc. They start of as sort-of rivals, and their friendship develops in a real and non-idealised way. Jane is our narrator and slowly learns that Katherine has depth and is different to the person Jane thought she was.

This is a Young Adult book and you can tell because all the heroes are teenage school girls, but I enjoyed it a lot as an adult. It's easy to read and very compelling. I found the zombie storyline and battles quite exciting, so even if you're not normally interested in historical fiction but like horror or adventure, you might like this book.

I read an interview where the author said she got the idea for this after reading Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies and thought, no way are rich white people gonna be the ones fighting zombies, which seems accurate. I saw this floating around Instagram around publication time and, honestly, I was drawn to the cover which is super badass. The book itself is actually really attractive, the pages have a faded rough cut effect, which suits the time period.

Do I recommend it for your bookclub? Yes. It's a fun, easy to read book, the type that's described as a "rollicking adventure", with plenty to discuss.

Do I recommend it for fun? Yes. You won't be able to put it down, and you'll want to read the sequel too!

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The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Title: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Author: Grady Hendrix

Rating: ★★★★★

—

"The Bible is hardly the best source for legal strategy," Maryellen said.

---

I saw this book floating around Instagram. I love the Southern vampire stuff (ie. Anne Rice and Sookie Stackhouse) and also bookclubbish things so I had to read it.

Very brief summary: The book follows Patricia and her book club. They live in the Old Village, a suburb of Charleston. Her neighbour is a vampire and children are dying. The tone is light, the story is witty and funny, and in the end the book club ladies emerge triumphant, kind of, but I finished it and felt...depressed? It's weird, but this book left me with a depressing aftertaste. 

I think because, while the ending is kind of positive, it's not that much of a win for me, because their triumphs are individual and their society hasn't really changed. The husbands are still assholes, the vampirism has lasting impact (he's an economic vampire as well: a 'land developer'), and at the end, despite everything that's happened and her apparent heartfelt sympathy, and the main character still seems to not quite instinctively include everyone into her definition of 'us'.

"The children are safe," Patricia said. "That's what matters."

Slick's throat worked for a minute, and then she said, Not the...ones in...Six Mile..."

The bookclub only really kick themselves into gear when their immediate circle is threatened, but were otherwise, if not happy about it, willing enough to ignore it and profit from it.

Also, ultimately, this is a book about women being constantly gaslighted and second guessed, and railroaded, by men around them and each other, into doing things that they know are awkward and wrong, to be 'nice', to avoid conflict, for social propriety. Even the private space of their book club is invaded. 

The bookclub ladies are sort of send-ups of Southern Stepford wife types, but they aren't wholly unbelievable. I know women like them who would act in a similar way under similar circumstances. Outside of the horror-story elements it's all realistic enough to be a little depressing, and actually that's possibly what's most depressing about it, and the real horror of the book, not the vampire.

That's how I feel, but it's not actually a dark book. I enjoyed the story. It is actually funny, it's fluid, readable, all those things. It would make a great book club book, especially because it revolves around a book club. Their true crime booklist is fabulous, and reading it I felt stirrings of desire for a true crime book club.

I've heard good things about his other books and the next thing I want to read is his Ikea horror, Horrorstör.

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More to the Story

Title: More to the Story

Author: Hena Khan

Rating: ★★★★★

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This is a children's book I came across while looking for YA books about 'women in the Muslim world'. This didn't make the list because it's about a Muslim Pakistani-American family living in Atlanta, but I enjoyed reading it so much and it starts on Eid, so I thought I'd review it today.

Eid Mubarak.

This book is inspired by/a sort of homage to Little Women. I haven't read Little Women in decades and can't tell you if there are similarities, but reading this reminded me strongly of a series I loved when I was a child - the Collette Murphy books by Colleen O'Shaughnessy McKenna.

The story here revolves around Jameela (cf Little Women's Jo) and her three sisters (each correlates to a sister in Little Women), their family and friends. Jameela writes for her school newspaper and her initial concerns about her writing, her father's new job that takes him away from home, and the family friend's nephew who's newly transplanted to Atlanta from the UK, are overshadowed by an illness in the family. However there is no death, and the book ends on a hopeful, uplifting note.

There is a part about racism, but school-level microaggressions not Mississippi-Burning-style, and racism isn't the main focus of the book, which I appreciate. Not every book about a cultural minority group has to be about racism or cultural struggle or differences. I feel they're consciously framed as an 'average' family in Georgia who eat chilli and watch football on Sundays, which I think is important especially for minority groups that are often othered. Their community is friendly and supportive, and I really like the climax of the book, it's genuinely so lovely and pure feeling

Would I recommend this? Yes, for children. I think children around the age of ten would really enjoy reading this. It's wholesome and feels age appropriate. It reads decidedly like a children's book. If you're an adult, it might be a good book for rekindling the feeling of childhood reading, especially if you liked Little Women or books like Ramona Quimby and Collette Murphy when you were little; but also if you're interested, like I am, about reading about a feel-good story about a 'regular' Muslim family living in Georgia, which isn't really a frequently represented group in literature.

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Five Books for Eid

It's the Eid pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Eid is this weekend, so I decided to suggest five books by and/or about women in the ‘Muslim world’. I tried to choose books with women as the main focus (one is a YA book about a little girl), that didn’t victimise women or demonise men in Muslim cultures. Although several revolve around war and revolutions, I tried to choose books that covered women with different experiences and opinions. Many of these books are more or less ‘real world’ accounts and although many of them are difficult to read and not all of them are ‘literary’, I would recommend them to everyone, if for nothing but the ideal that through reading we can build empathy and understanding of different peoples and experiences, and these are voices rarely heard in mainstream Western literature.

"Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn’t dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us." - Lolita in Tehran

I’ll start with the easiest to read:

1. Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa al-Sanea

A casual, light book about women from the KSA. It takes the form of gossipy anonymous e-mails about the lives of a group of four college-age women who were high school friends in Riyadh - mostly their adventures in the world of love and relationships in a country where they have limited contact with men.

If I were to file this under a genre it would be chick lit. It’s fun and easy to read. The women are clearly privileged: they’re wealthy, they travel, they get nose jobs, they wear Elie Saab. The writer wrote this in Arabic for an Arab audience and didn’t expect it to be translated and disseminated in the English speaking world. The characters aren’t meant to represent all Saudi women, and though this was controversial and was immediately banned when it came out in the KSA, this isn’t meant to be a political polemic. It’s a rare pop culture peek into the lives of ‘regular’ women in a country that seldom reveals itself in this way.

2. Our Women on the Ground, edited by Zahra Hankir

This is a compilation of essays by Arab women journalists reporting from the Arab world. The journalists include not just those working for familiar media agencies like the BBC, New York Times and Al Jazeera, but also freelancers and citizen journalists.

These essays are personal and many deal with the realities of living and working in war zones. It's not the easiest book to read, but I think it's an important book. If you had to choose only one book in this list, I suggest this one. Every essay is eloquent. The book presents not just the perspectives of Arab woman journalists about the conflicts they cover, they also share their lives and work conditions honestly and openly. In societies which are gender segregated, Arab women journalists can access places that would otherwise be closed off to Western, and male, journalists, and in this book we hear from people who we would otherwise find difficult to reach.

3. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

This lyrical free verse YA book is about a Syrian girl named Jude. Syria is on the cusp of revolution. After her house is raided, she and her mother go to Cincinnati to live with relatives. There she adjusts to living in a new country, speaking a language she isn't completely comfortable with yet, and becoming American. She faces some Islamphobia, but also meets lovely and welcoming people in her school and community, and by the end she has made friends and is beginning to feel more settled into her new home.

I found the writing to be particularly beautiful. The targeted age group is middle grade. I think some issues would have to be explained or researched by children as they'd be too young to have been politically aware and following the news coverage of the Arab Spring as it occurred, and some background guidance on revolutions and the political situation in the Middle East would be helpful for them to contextualize the story. However the latter half about Jude's new life in America is I think helpful for helping young readers (and adults!) empathise with the day to day struggles of refugee or immigrant children. There are also many children who will identify with Jude's story of immigration and/or escaping conflict, and who don't often see their story represented in children's literature.

More generally, this is a book about home and belonging. The loss of home, the desire for home, and the struggle to build a new home. Although the ending is uplifting, I think it's ultimately a sad book, because the Syria Jude had to leave behind can never be reclaimed, and this loss will always exist for her.

4. Reading Lolita in Tehran

I realise this book is a little controversial. It's been accused of being New Orientalist and neoconservative by Hamid Dabashi (he writes the forward for Dreaming of Baghdad, my last book recommendation below).

This book is the memoir of an English literature professor teaching in Tehran during the revolution. When she's fired from her job for refusing to wear the hijab, she starts a book club/reading group for some of her female students in her living room.

I enjoyed this book, it's very readable. Much of the book are her discussions with her students about literature and their lives, and she directly correlates the books they read to their political experiences in Iran (c.f. the title: Reading Lolita in Tehran). I recommend reading it at least for her funny story of putting The Great Gatsby on trial in her classroom, and other amusing anecdotes, like her student life protests and when her drug dealer neighbour hid in their garden.

This isn't a book that's meant to encompass the experiences of all Iranian women, or a literary critique on Lolita, or a broad political analysis on Iran-US relations. It's a memoir of a woman, who's upper class, educated in the US, and decidedly secular. She seems to like Marx, dislike the hijab, and that is entirely fair and her right to do so and write about in her memoir.

I personally feel that some of the criticisms of her book are a little unfair, and people are reading too much into the book, and expecting too much out of it, but I say this with the caveat that I read this years after its publication, so I read this removed from any expectations the initial marketing/advertising would have inspired. I'll probably write a separate post on how I feel about this book. However I would be remiss if I didn't also I also suggest you read a balancing piece, Jasmine and Stars (Reading more than Lolita in Tehran) by Fatemah Keshavarz.

I recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran to you with the assumption that you are a politically aware, rational adult who doesn't assume that one writer's opinions and experiences are representative of an entire country, and doesn't look to a single book to give you an overview of 'the condition of women's lives in Iran'. Look at it as a literature professor's anecdotes about her life in books, and proceed from there.

5. Dreaming of Baghdad by Haifa Zangana

I left this till the end because this is the hardest book in the list.

Haifa Zangana was an Iraqi Communist Party activist who was imprisoned during Saddam Hussein's regime. She was initially tortured and imprisoned in a political prison, then transferred to Abu Ghraib, then to a prostitute's prison. This is essentially her recollections.

It's not a torture narrative, instead it takes on a dreamlike quality, and switches from the first to third person, letters to herself, disjointed dreams and nightmares, scenes from her childhood, her present, and her time as an activist and in prison.

This is a book I really want you to read. It will haunt you forever. Reading about imprisonment, torture and executions is always difficult, but I felt reading this was like bearing witness to her testimony.

[mymurderbooks]

Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden)

Book

Title: Real Murders

Author: Charlaine Harris

Rating: ★★★★☆

Series: Aurora Teagarden

TV Adaptation

Channel: Hallmark Movies & Mysteries

Released in: 2015

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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I had the Hallmark adaptation of Aurora Teagarden: Real Murders on in the background, when I suddenly thought, hang on, that's not quite right - it's not as I remembered it. Sometimes the book and the screen version of stories run together in my head and I'm not quite sure what parts belong to which, especially when I'd read or watched something quite some time ago. So I decided to reread the first Aurora Teagarden book, Real Murders.

It's a short, easy, engaging read. I finished it in a few hours. Parts of it were familiar, but I didn't remember chunks of it, and the Hallmark version deviated quite a bit. Mostly, Hallmark had cleaned it up so it was simplified and sanitised, ie. no discoveries of the bodies of murder victims, no mention of the Communist party, no worrying scenes where Aurora Teagarden is placed in mortal danger, and mostly the changes are inconsequential, except two things: they turned the first murder victim was a nice lady who was liked by everyone, because everyone must get along in Hallmark world; and the motive for the murders wasn't mentioned, because, in the book, it was perversion. Sick, sexual perversion, and of course that isn't Hallmark friendly.

I mean, I guess you could say it's implied, because why else would someone commit serial killings patterned after old famous murders if they weren't sick perverts of some kind? Hallmark glosses over the core motive - although committing copycat murders could be an end to itself I suppose. Overall the TV show came off a lot blander than the book.

Despite that I like both versions and recommend them for relaxation. I like that Aurora Teagarden is a rational character with autonomy and common sense. I like that the writing is succinct and straightforward, that the dialogue sounds natural. There is more tension and suspense in the book, and a greater sense of danger. The Hallmark adaptation is much calmer and everyone is pleasant, everything is nice - it's very soothing, even though people keep dying in terrible ways.

In the book there are clues to the murderer's identity, pretty obvious clues that we don't see (I didn't), and Aurora doesn't see, because the writer has successfully disguised some characters as background character small town archetypes. One of the clues in particular, I felt I really should have seen it! I like that the solution to the murder wasn't obvious. I also like the idea of the Real Murders club, I want to be in one!

Do I recommend this? Definitely yes, better than the average cozy mystery. The real murders club is inspired, and I like Charlaine Harris' believable female characters.

[mymurderbooks]

Christmas Caramel Murder (A Hannah Swensen Mystery)

Title: Christmas Caramel Murder

Author: Joanne Fluke

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Series: Hannah Swensen Mysteries aka Murder She Baked

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I wanted to read a cozy Christmas book and pretend it's Christmas. I've also been watching Hallmark's Murder She Baked, so naturally I read a Hannah Swensen mystery - but make it Christmas.

Was it cozy? Yes, very, with a Christmas play and Christmas baking and some ghost of Christmas magic (or Hannah's subconscious). I saw the murderer a little after she was introduced and so will you, but it's such an easy comforting Christmas read what it doesn't matter, and actually it makes us anxious for Hannah when she finally confronts the killer.

There's clues, and Hannah Investigates but ultimately I didn't feel like I was drawn in to solve the puzzle of the murder along with her, but more like the story was passively unravelling. The Christmas ghost clues contributed to that feeling.

To be completely honest the townsfolk are a little bit judgmental about the victim, and there's a double standard with regard to people's personal lives, and everyone in this town is a little too nosey for their own good. However this is offset by how nice the bakery is, and the overall cozy setting. The book is full of recipes, there's a recipe after every chapter, with an index at the back of the book. Helpfully, many of them use things like Cool Whip, cake mix and condensed milk, and seem easy to assemble.

Would I recommend this? Yes, it's a very easy, relaxed, quick read.

For your book club? Maybe? I'm not sure if it's meaty enough for discussion.

Would I reread this? No, it's not interesting enough.

Would I read more books in the series? Yes, it's definitely cozy, and hits the spot if you want to read something with murder, Christmas, and baked goods.

[mymurderbooks]

Have You Seen Her

Title: Have You Seen Her

Author: Lisa Hall

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

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I strongly dislike this book but it's not terribly written. There's a twist ending, which I saw from the beginning but might not be obvious if you aren't a cynical book reader and read it with an open mind. It's an easy read, I finished the book in a few hours. It generally flows smoothly and doesn't feel pointlessly padded out, though I started skimming about two thirds in. I'm not entirely sure if this was because the story did get draggy, or because I started to find the main character (and narrator's) faffing and judginess annoying - so much did I dislike her. I think a fair rating of the book that considers how it would be received by its clearly intended target audience, ie. middle-class mums from the home counties, would be 3-3.5, but I personally dislike it while acknowledging it's not offensively bad, so it averages out to a 2.

First I will give you a story overview, for context and dramatis personae. Then I will elaborate on why I don't like it. This will include spoilers because I must explain how I knew who the kidnapper was early on and why this disappoints me.

Warning! Massive and casual spoilers!

The story opens with bonfire night at a primary school in a small posh town in Surrey. The narrator and protagonist (I guess), is Anna, who's Laurel's nanny. Laurel's mother, Fran, an actress, is there too - but not Laurel. Laurel is gone.

The plot follows the search for Laurel, which is quickly classified as a kidnapping. The police investigate, and Anna investigates too, to a limited extent. There's a community group mostly assembled from the PTA that's helping, and which produces red herrings, one of whom is called Ruth, and who I will talk about a little later.

One thing I liked about this book was how there were so many suspicious characters. Ruth, Laurel's father Dominic, his ex-girlfriend, a friendly neighbour man, and not explicitly, Fran, the mother.

Ruth was immediately obvious as a suspicious person, so much that I filed her away as a red herring. She turned out to be exactly that, and a perpetrator of the mini-crimes in the book (suspicious phone calls, etc).

How did I know?

Because I was reading a book targeted to middle-class women in England, and she perfectly fit the profile of weak sad minor antagonists. Dowdy, mousey hair, unmanicured nails, suspiciously vague and unverified back story, overly friendly to the point of being pushy, and also, failed ambitions (theatre school). The first time she popped up I thought, yes, she'll be a bad guy. I considered she could be the kidnapper, her reason would be Fran had inadvertently caused the loss of her child through careless actor egotism (cf. Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd), or some theatre school schoolgirl vendetta, but as she became more obnoxiously intrusive, I knew she wasn't, and the perp must be Fran.

Even when Dominic was arrested, ostensibly, with evidence, I knew he must have been framed by Fran, and I was so disappointed.

How did I know?

The story/narrator had been against her from the beginning, taking small digs at her. However I didn't feel this was deliberate, more that she was being set up to look like an awful person while being declared as a has-to-be-innocent distressed mother-of-kidnapped-victim, so when the final reveal happened we would have little sympathy with her, but also be - surprised! I never saw it coming! etc.

I'm not against the set-up in theory but I felt how she was described was kinda mean and unfair. The narrator spends too much time describing how bougie Fran is, with her fancy coat and teapot (with price explicitly stated!), her Conran furniture, and how she tells people (presumably her friends/family/other people she knows) about her expensive flooring - and then we find out it's originally Dominic's house, and since they're married, it's his kitchen too and their shared expenditure, but somehow only she is judged for, well, having/spending money. Coupled with this, we learn early on that she's overly frugal, "so obsessed by money sometimes, it's unreal".

I felt also that the narrator has an unfair bias in favour of Dominic. She criticises Fran for not being at home with Laurel enough, and that she herself, to paraphrase, has been more of a real mother to Laurel (while also being shocked that someone would say something similar on Facebook). Fran would rather go to auditions and the theatre/filming studio, she comes home late from boozy wrap parties - well, she's and actress, presumably it's her job to audition and act and network; the sympathy is noticeably less than that offered to the surgeon father, who's barely home, even when he isn't at work (he's busy having an affair). There's a suggestion that he can be abusive as well, but again characters seem to extend sympathy to him, and she's poisonous, deranged, without framing this in relation to her unhappy marriage.

Fran shrieks, she has a 'cut-glass accent', she speaks with ugly tones -

there is a part, particularly, where the police arrest friendly neighbour man (not their neighbour, he lives next to the primary school). It transpires that nanny Anna encouraged Laurel to talk to and be friends with him because he's 'nice', Fran criticises this, her voice is described as bitter, her lips 'twisted into a curl of disgust', and I feel that we're meant to feel negatively about Fran, and sorry for Anna, and think she's overreacting a little, but c'mon now. Fran's right. Anna encouraged her daughter to befriend a stranger whom Anna deemed nice out of nothing by superficial appearances/interactions, undoing her own attempts to teach her daughter to not talk to strangers.

I particularly dislike the juxtaposition of Anna and Fran. Anna, despite repeatedly dropping hints about some unsavoury past she's escaping (it's not that juicy or incriminating even), is evidently the 'nice' one, the one we're supposed to empathise with. I however dislike how judgmental she is of Fran, how she judges people as nice or not nice based ostensibly on appearances, how she judged her previous employee (ex-model, counterpart to actress Fran, as someone who wasn't cut out to be a mother), and actually, I find her presumptuous.

I just feel that, especially with the ending, the narrative stoked dislike against her with relatively little sympathy. The ending was so disappointing to me. I wanted Fran to not be the kidnapper, I wanted her to be written in a kinder and more understanding way, I wanted the story to be less nasty about her. I wanted her to not end up being portrayed as a crazy bitter lady.

In all honesty, I've read a few books of the type, ie. woman-focused thrillers set in middle class (and up) England, for some reason written in the present tense (I assume to convey a sense of urgency and to have us identify with the narrator), the main character is a 'nice' woman with a secret, 'twist' ending, and I think I just don't like them. I tend not to like the main character, and resent feeling steered into empathy for them. This style of book might just not be for me.

Do I recommend it? It wasn't for me, but

For your book club? Probably yes. It's an easy, quick read that can generate a lot of different opinions and would probably make good discussion fodder.