75. A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

listened on Libby

370 pgs.

2014
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 10/9/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 2.5
Setting: NYC 1911 & 9/11

My comments: Not a huge fan of this book, for a couple of reasons.  Told in two voices, one of a nurse, Clara, who survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 to "hide" on Ellis Island and a quilt shop fabric-lover, Taryn, who lost her husband on 9/11.  The majority of the story is told by nurse Clara ... whom I didn't like.  At all.  Her inconsistent personality (she flip-flops between a mamby-pamby-scared-everything watcher-of-the-world to a brazen in-your-face do-gooder) drove me nuts. A minority of the story was told by Taryn, ten years after 9/11, still bruised and barely living, which was more powerful and believable.  But not enough!  And the connection of this scarf was feeble, to say the least.  I didn't rate it lower because I enjoyed the history it shared and the 9/11 portion, but the 1911 lengthy section didn't work for me at all.

Goodreads synopsis:  A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away....

September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries …and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her? 

September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers …the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. Will a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life?

4. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

Listened to the eAudio which I borrowed from the library
narrated  by Emily Rankin
Unabridged audio (9:03)
2019 Berkley
352 pgs.
Adult RomCom
Finished 1/9/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.87 - 22,921 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary LA

First line/s:  "In which we meet our heroine and witness a crime of thoughtlessness. Imagine you're a bird.  You can be any kind of bird, but hose of you who've chosen ostrich or chicken are going to struggle to keep up."

My comments: Read (or listened to....) in one day.  Oh darn, it ended.  I didn't want it to end.  What a deliciously written (and narrated) book!  Ms. Waxman loves words and putting them together.  She's created a wonderful family, clever conversation, and the absolutely most perfect setting int eh word:  a cozy, busy, viable bookstore.  Then  she's loaded the story with people to care about, situations that are over-the-top funny ... and trivia, lots of trivia.  Long live Nina, her planner, her cat, Phil, (Tom, of course), and beautifully crafted bookshelves loaded with books.

Goodreads synopsis:  The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
          When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?
          Nina considers her options.
                    1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
                    2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
                    3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
          It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.

65. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

listened to on Audible
2017, Scribner
336 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 11/13/17
Goodreads rating: 3.81 - 7705 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary Denver

First line/s:  "Lydia heard the first flap of paper wings as the first book fell from its shelf."

My comments: A couple of friends of GoodReads liked this book, so I thought I'd give it a try.  The story slowly pulled e in.  Took me awhile to get into it, but once I did I didn't want to put it down.  I really like the way it was written, it reminded me of gently folding a dry ingredient into a wet one when baking.  It had many, many layers to it, especially a well-flushed-out cast of characters.  The setting, Denver, Colorado, is almost like one of the characters.  As the tragic story unfolds, one gets a strong feeling about which way it's headed, but there are still many surprises, twists, and turns.  This is not a police procedural or any sort of murder mystery.  It's a solid psychological mystery and I very much recommend it.

Goodreads synopsis: “Sullivan’s debut is a page-turner featuring a heroine bookseller who solves a cold case with clues from books—what is not to love?” —Nina George, author of The Little French Bistro, and the New York Times bestselling The Little Paris Bookshop
          When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.
          Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
          But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
          As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.​

68. The Hired Girl - Laura Amy Schlitz

2015 Candlewick Press
387 pgs.
YS Historical Fiction
Finished 12/12/15
Goodreads rating:  4.05
My rating:4.5 - an excellent read
Setting:  1911 Baltimore, Md.

First line/s:  Sunday, June the fourth, 1911  "Today Miss Chandler gave me this beautiful book.  I vow that I will never forget her kindness to me, and I will use this book as she told me to - I will write in it with truth and refinement."

My comments:  The book is divided into seven "parts," each with a painting as it frontispiece and title. The paintings are acknowledged in the back of the book with painter, date, size, and gallery where each can be found.  I liked this.  The story is about Joan Skaggs (who renamed herself Janet Lovelace), a fourteen year old abused runaway who becomes the hired girl for an upper-class Jewish family in Baltimore.  The story is told from her point-of-view, in first person format, which works really well for this interesting tale.  I particularly enjoyed all the reference to cultural Judaism, which I've learned so much about in my last few years teaching in a Jewish day school.

Becky's review from Becky's Book Reviews

Goodreads Summary:  Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself—because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of—a woman with a future. 

Inspired by her grandmother’s journal, Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her sharp wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a comedic tour de force destined to become a modern classic. Joan’s journey from the muck of the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity! Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!) takes its reader on an exploration of feminism and housework, religion and literature, love and loyalty, cats, hats, bunions, and burns.

44. Small Acts of Amazing Courage - Gloria Whelan

A Paula Wiseman Book, Simon & Schuster, 2011
HC $15.99
for:  Mid Grades
218 pgs.
Rating:  3.5

In 1919 India, being the daughter of a high-ranking British official gives you wealth, prestige, and power.  In Small Acts of Amazing Courage, Gloria Whelan tells of such a daughter,15-year-old Rosalind James.  Rosy's father has been away a lot, leaving her care to Rosy's mother and a huge household of various Indian servants.  Rosy has grown up with her maid's daughter, loves the bazaar and all things related to India.  Her father greatly forbids her to have anything with the native population.  She's strong headed and disobeys him.  And this leads him to send her to England - for the first time in her life - for a "proper" education, under the care of her two aunts.

The setting goes from privileged life in India to a steamship from Bombay to England, to life in England and back to India again.  Along the way we meet Gandhi and many of his followers and sympathizers, learning about nonviolent protesting and the plight of the Indian people.  We learn a bit about Hinduism, the caste system, and the colonials.  It's an interesting taste, but it's just a taste.  I would have liked a little deeper look into life of this girl.  Where some books are just too long and involved, this one needed a little more.  I love Gloria Whelan's work, and I was a bit disappointed with this one.

26. Listening for Lions - Gloria Whelan

For: Middle Grades
Harper Collins, 2005
194 pages
A good story with a few minor complaints

Rachel Sheridan is a 13-year old white girl living in East Africa, near Mt. Kenya, in 1919. Her missionary parents have begun a hospital and church in Tumaini, among the Kikuyu and Masai tribes, somewhere outside of Nairobi.
Rachel's story is told in three parts. Both her parents die of the influenza, along with many indigenous people, and she is sent by a notoriously greedy British couple to England to impersonate their dead daughter. She reluctantly does this, but fears imprisonment if she doesn't comply. The second part is told when she is in England, pretending she is Valerie Pritchard, and becoming close with Valerie's rich grandfather, who is housebound and a bird-lover, like Rachel. Their third part is the one that includes too much passing of time. A fourth part should have been included, because Rachel goes from 13 or 14 to 23 and returns to Africa. The last 8-10 years should have been told in its own "part."

Well, anyways, Rachel returns to Africa to rebuild the hospital that her parents had begun. It really is a good story, with quite a bit of information about the customs and animals of British East Africa.

I loved Gloria Whelan's Homeless Bird - it's still one of my favorites. This story is a good one, too...I just wish the end had not been so rushed, or globbed together after such good story-telling in the first seven-eighths of the book!