Martin's Must-Reads: Recent Episodes
Betty Martin, Mark Martin
There are one million new books published each year. With so many books and so little time, where do you begin to find your next must-read? There’s the New York Times Bestseller list, the Goodreads app, the Cape Library’s Staff picks shelf and now Martin’s Must-Reads.Every Wednesday at 6:42 and 8:42 a.m., and Sunday at 8:18 a.m., Betty Martin recommends a must read based on her own personal biases for historical fiction, quirky characters and overall well-turned phrases. Her list includes WWII novels, biographies of trailblazers, novels with truly unique individuals and lots more. Reading close to 100 titles a year, Betty has plenty of titles to share. Tune in each Wednesday and visit KRCU.org for previous must-reads.Local support for "Martin's Must Reads" comes from the Cape Girardeau Public Library and the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library.
“I have one of the weirder jobs. I’m the recipient of a fellowship from the Lockwood Library, you know, the museum on Fifth Avenue.”
“In my long life - and it’s been far longer than anyone knows - I have leapt off a mountain in Spain, dived into a pool of sharks in Australia, stood in front of an oncoming train in China, even taken a bullet during a Mexican bank robbery.”
“Chapter 1. 'What’s two plus two?' Something about the question irritates me. I’m tired. I drift back to sleep. A few minutes pass, then I hear it again. ‘What’s two plus two?’ The soft, feminine voice lacks emotion and the pronunciation is identical to the previous time she said it. It’s a computer. A computer is hassling me. I’m even more irritated now.”
“Cal Jenkins was born in the spring of 1920 with one leg shorter than the other. Just two inches shorter, but that was enough to make plenty of things difficult. Balancing on a bicycle took twice as long for him to learn as it did for other kids. Track and field was out of the question. So was walking without a pronounced limp.”
“Although this book is a work of fiction, the quotes that appear in front of the chapters are all real and verifiable. Many of the cited journals and articles were kept in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, which existed as a distinguished part of the university from 1930 until 1965. Inside the laboratory, researchers conducted tests designed to measure the psychic abilities of college students and other volunteers.”
“I still dream of birds. I watch them circle, dive into rough waves, and fly up to the sun. I call to them but hear no answer. Alone, I stand on a stone island. I watch for ships and see three coming. Tall ships close enough to hail. I load my musket and shoot into the air. When I shoot into the air, ten thousand birds rise screaming. Their wings beat against the wind. All the sailors hear and see, but their commander orders them to sail on.”
“It’s interesting to note that there are two groups of people who are rarely, if ever, suspected of murder. These groups are elderly women and little girls. On the whole, when it comes to murder, the stats very much favor the men. The odd woman is thrown into the mix every now and again, but she’s inevitably perimenopausal (and having been through the change myself, certainly understand why). But an elderly woman or little girl committing murder? It’s one in a million. I’ve always liked to think I was special.”
“The Malicarn. The sixteenth winter in the reign of Queen Hannah. At night the master would invite the journeymen and apprentices to supper with his family, and that is where Buck first heard real tales of the old wars. How there used to be hundreds of wizards, how the old king Prion, himself once just a lowly sheepherder, became the one to unite them against the Dark Mages, how the many men of the Malicarn were called to fight.”
“When they built the retirement property on Maui then, and he told her abruptly and without warning that he wanted to sell their other houses, the prospect frightened her."
“Alfred, the youngest, blond, stubborn, and adventurous. Inez, the middle child, blue-eyed, a dreamer who heard music in the woods no one else could, and who could replay it by memory on her violin. And Marguerite, the eldest who even before she’d mastered her alphabet, invented feral dances and rambling plays, persuading her siblings to perform alongside her for their parents and the nanny and footmen and maids.”
“Stephen Rensselaer was named after the famous and sometimes infamous Hudson Valley Stephen Van Rensselaers of earlier times. But years before Annapolis, and perhaps why he chose the Naval Academy, he came to associate his first name with that of Stephen Decatur, the youngest captain in the Navy’s history and the hero of the Barbary Wars, whose life was heroic but whose death was not. Neither the Barbary pirates nor the British were able to killStephen Decatur.”
“Alice. July 5, 1976. The first time Alice saw them, they were walking side by side on the narrow gravel road that led into the RV park and campground. A boy and girl, moving together in a slow, slouching way with his arm around her shoulders, and her hand tucked into the back pocket of his bell-bottoms. His army-style backpack looked heavy, the seams stretching, a rolled-up orange sleeping bag tied to the bottom.”
“In a blinding flash, a frightening memory materialized in Gessner’s consciousness. She now realized where her physical body was lying at this very instant…and, even more terrifying, what was being done to her. She was on her back, tightly strapped into a machine she herself had created. A monster stood over her."
“It’s…nice.” Max didn’t sound like he meant it. He hadn’t picked Vista View—that would be Alice again. We were standing a few feet from the entrance, watching a fake waterfall trickle over fake river rock, trying to work up the resolve to go inside. Upstairs, movers were arranging what remained of my furniture without me, but I couldn’t seem to get past the forecourt.”
“This book was born on a cold, drizzly, late spring day when I clambered over the split-rail cedar fence that surrounds my pasture and made my way through wet woods to the modest frame house where Joe Rantz lay dying….”
“Upstairs, Lisavet,” he said, reaching into his coat for the pocket watch. The old familiar brass was slick in his palm. His fingers fumbled over the crown until it clicked into place, and he flungopen the door. What had once been their cozy, two-room apartment was instead a silent cavern of shadows. “I want you to wait in there. Stay right there by this door.”
“Right about Fence Five, I started to think, the movies lied to me. Roxie had her head up in front of me, so high I was almost looking between the black tips crowning her chocolate-brown ears. They perfectly framed the jump we were approaching. A jump I had thought would be easy—just a little row of barrels!—but my headstrong mare clearly disagreed.”
“On the left, right, and rear walls were portraits, ninety-two of them in total, done in pencil on white paper and in black frames of three sizes. All had obviously been done by the same artist. And, as if to reflect the customers in the shop at that moment, the collection included a full range of humanity—age, race, and expression. Portraits and portraits and more portraits.”
“They show you how to make bombs on the internet. If you know where to look. What to buy, where to buy it from. How to fit the whole thing together. There are even videos…They don’t really tell you about the risks. But the risks stand to reason. Be careful with explosives, that doesn’t need to be spelled out to anyone surely?”
“And whose nitwit idea was this?’ Betty Hardacre snapped, her orthopedic shoes sinking into sand. Betty was the chair of the Episcopal Church Women. She prided herself on upholding the parish’s long-standing traditions. Pastor Miranda McCurdy looked up from the grill where she tended to the sizzling barbecue. As the first woman to lead St. Gabriel-by-the-Sea in 180 years, she was used to resistance.”
“1 August 2023 4:34 p.m. There were only five minutes left for Joy Moody and her twin daughters."
“I mostly remember the trial,” she said. “And the aftermath - being taken into a room and asked to draw what happened."
“Lizzie pressed hard on the bridge of her nose, willing the numbers in front of her to change.”
“Many young authors finding themselves so satisfactorily situated would have waded into the choppy seas of their ambitions without a moment’s delay...."
“There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office on a June morning in 1972. Richard “Dick” Goodwin had just taken an office on the third floor."
“It’s the crime of the decade! The early-morning headline explodes across my iPhone as I scan it through bleary eyes."
“The day Sloan Cooper died began before dawn and ended shortly before midnight. As a corporal in the Natural Resources Police, she’d helped take down a trio of men who spent most of the fall harassing, robbing and assaulting hikers on the trails in the Western Maryland mountains.”
“The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice. I’d been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless."
“That evening I sat down with Lizzie and six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson. These were indispensable."
“London Evening Post, November 21, 2017. A warning about the dangers of open-water swimming has been issued following the death of a young woman at a local nature reserve. Sophie Blake, twenty-one, went missing on the evening of July 7, 2017."
“She examines him again, this immaculate twenty something, his tall form folded into the back seat with the large suitcase he’s kept beside him, opting to fill the trunk with smaller things: his tablet and laptop, backpack, duffel, cooler bag. Miserable yet sincere."
“I’m going to tell you what happened in Las Vegas, and I’m going to tell you everything as best I can, but my best is hampered by the fact this all occurred when I was doing two shows a night, channeling a dead princess, sleeping until lunchtime, popping a bit too much Adderal and Valium (yes both), and periodically - like that princess - purging over a jet-black toilet.”
“Dead in the heart of Lee County, between the Ruelynn coal camp and a settlement people call Right Poor, the top of a road between two steep mountains is where our single-wide was set."
“This book is nothing like the history textbooks I grew up with. It’s visual, it’s handwritten, it jumps around in time. It’s an attempt at a new way of seeing history - placing movements and events and people from across time in conversation with one another in a way that, I hope, offers some insight into who we are as a country, and who we have the power to become.”
“Forty-seven years before construction workers discovered the skeleton in the old farmer’s well on Chicken Hill, a Jewish theater manager in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, named Moshe Ludlow had a vision about Moses. Moshe had this vision on a Monday morning in February as he was cleaning out the remnants of a Chick Webb one-night stand at his tiny All-American Dance Hall and Theater on Main Street.”
“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson. It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game following four years on the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow - it described a philosophy and a territory, a neighborhood with borders and local customs.”
Over the course of twenty-three chapters Bryson explains the mysteries of the human body. The chapters are also riddled with information about the medical geniuses who discovered how the body works, how they tried to solve medical issues and some of the unique patients who helped with their discoveries.
Over the course of twenty-three chapters Bryson explains the mysteries of the human body. The chapters are also riddled with information about the medical geniuses who discovered how the body works, how they tried to solve medical issues and some of the unique patients who helped with their discoveries.
“They were in the orchard. Hands bound behind their backs with rope, they were all kneeling in a neat row facing the river, first the men, then the women. At the end of the row was a girl."
“It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable - sometimes it isn’t even noticeable - but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.”
“He could have some one out there, “ the man said, pulling back the front window curtains a tentative inch. “Watching the house right now.” He was careful not to step directly in front of the glass as he peeked outside. He ran his fingers nervously through his thick, dark hair. His handsome features were undercut by the fear in his eyes. He wasn’t used to being afraid. He was unaccustomed to the role of prey.”
“It is estimated that over half a million people used the London Underground stations as shelters during the war, many on a regular basis. The stations were up to the task, becoming underground communities with provisions and services.”
“Lenny Marks seldom found herself unprepared. Lessons for her grade five students were religiously compiled a fortnight in advance, her tax return would be ready to submit no later than the fifteenth of July every year and her home fire escape plan was reviewed and updated each summer. She found tremendous peace in this level of organization, which was as close to happiness as Lenny Marks ever planned to be. Happiness, she knew, was unstable and quite unreliable.”
“In Malaysia, our grandparents love us by not speaking. More specifically, they do not speak about their lives from 1941-1945, the period when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Malaysia, tossed the British colonizers out, and turned a quiet nation into one that was at war with itself.”
“It’s all about the men,” Gwyn said. “Did I tell you I tried to join a Vietnam vets talk therapy session in Dallas? It’s always the same thing. ‘You don’t belong. You’re a woman. There were no women in Vietnam.’”
“Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. That’s her routine. I stand on a grimy square of sidewalk near the busy intersection of 16th and K Streets, scanning the approaching pedestrians. My new client will arrive in seven minutes. I don’t need to meet her today. ”
“A thousand years in the past, a thousand years in the future - no matter where you live or how rich or poor you are - the four phases of a woman’s life are the same,” Respectful Lady says. “You are a little girl, so you are still in milk days. When you turn fifteen, you will enter hair- pinning days. The way we style your hair will announce to the world that you are ready for marriage.”
“Julia was in the back garden, an eighteen-by-sixteen-foot rectangle hemmed by wooden fences, watching her mother dig up the last of the season’s potatoes at the exact time William was due at the house. She knew he’d be punctual and that one of her sisters would let him in. William would probably be flustered by her father, who would ask him if he knew any poetry by heart, and by Emeline and Cecelia, who wouldn’t cease moving or talking. Sylvia was working at the library, so he’d be spared her inquisitive stare,”
“If you visit the Alabaster River at sunrise or sunset, you’re likely to see the sudden small explosions of water where fish are feeding. Although there are many kinds of fish who make the Alabaster their home, the most aggressive are channel catfish. They’re mud suckers, bottom feeders, river vultures, the worst kind of scavengers. Channel cats will eat anything. This is the story of how they came to eat Jimmy Quinn.”
“With Ruth, I always thought that there would be a next time. For more than twenty years, she had defied not one but three bouts of cancer, not to mention other medical complications. Her endurance, her will to live even her plain old-fashioned grit, were unmatched. After one surgery, when most of us would be pushing the nursing station call button, she drafted a major speech. She even participated in Supreme Court oral arguments from her hospital bed.”
“So, how does it feel? Said Dr. Qadry, fixing Raymer with her pale blue eyes. “Yesterday was your last day, right?” Right. In fact his photo had made the front page of the paper, it’s headline reading: “The End of an Era.”
“David’s success in business was ten percent luck, ten percent indefatigability and zero percent Ida Mae. Mayer’s achievements in Torah scholarship originated from an altogether different formula. Had it not been for his mother, he never would have gone to yeshiva and been accepted into the Drezner clan. Sure, his success story had a supporting cast - Rabbi Kugel, Mrs. Kugel, his early yeshiva mentors - but when Ida Mae revealed her Jewish identity to her sons that blistering summer day, she set everything in motion.”
In Performance. Paris, October 20, 1968. In her apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel, Maria drew the brush across her eyelid into an italic flick. Her hand was surprisingly steady. It was always like this before a performance: there would be nerves before, but once she sat down in front of her dressing room mirror, she would become completely absorbed in her task and the terrors would recede as she painted her face.”
“Day 1,299 of My Captivity. Darkness suits me. I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank. Not perfect, but close enough. Almost-darkness, like the middle-bottom of the sea. I lived there before I was captured and imprisoned. I cannot remember, yet I can still taste the untamed currents of the cold open water. Darkness runs through my blood. Who am I, you ask? My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. ...I am a giant Pacific octopus.”
“Day 1,299 of My Captivity. Darkness suits me. I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank. Not perfect, but close enough. Almost-darkness, like the middle-bottom of the sea. I lived there before I was captured and imprisoned. I cannot remember, yet I can still taste the untamed currents of the cold open water. Darkness runs through my blood. Who am I, you ask? My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. ...I am a giant Pacific octopus.”
“Prologue. October 13, 2023. The baby stops fussing, settling into my arms like a sleepy puppy. The soft weight of her. She is back to sleep, her face peaceful as a porcelain doll’s. That wasn’t hard. The living room window is open; fevered voices carry in from the terrace of the apartment above. Commotion. Mania. I shouldn’t be surprised. I recognize the sound of Cassie’s screaming, obviously - I’ve heard her scream dozens of times.”
“I didn’t mean to keep count of how many people I’d watched die since Mrs. Heyland thirty-one years ago, but my subconscious was a diligent accountant. Especially since I was nearing a pretty impressive milestone - today the tally nudged up to ninety-seven.”
“For a long moment, the command post is silent. All eyes study the drone video feed on the screen. A sea of red heat signatures is moving through the jungle, heading directly for Jericho City. We’ll never survive contact with this many E. Rex. Even before we came down to the planet, we knew that the Eos Rex was the most dangerous predator on this world. We call them E. Rex because they resemble the T. Rex from Earth’s past.”
It seems like Almost Yesterday when the community of Greenville, Missouri experienced a disastrous flood. The event was the most extensive flood in the history of the small town on the St. Francis River, and caused such destruction that it permanently altered the region.
“I see a young man on TV, riding a horse out of a barn, hugging a little girl. Let’s face it, I’m in the market for a useful idiot, and he’s strong and has that big goofy grin. So voila, there he is, the ideal candidate. He doesn’t have the brains of a plate of spaghetti, or seems not to. A cipher even to himself. Never even voted, can you believe it. Perfect, absolutely perfect. I’ll create him. I’ll be his Henry Higgins. And he’ll repay me with votes.” L.D. chuckled. “I had no idea what I was in for.”
Many years ago, while visiting Coventry Cathedral, my mother was taken by the beautiful needlepoint kneelers that were in every row. She asked the guide if they sold the pattern for them and the guide went off to check. She returned with a packet of four of the original pattern papers and simply gave them to my mother.
Many years ago, while visiting Coventry Cathedral, my mother was taken by the beautiful needlepoint kneelers that were in every row. She asked the guide if they sold the pattern for them and the guide went off to check. She returned with a packet of four of the original pattern papers and simply gave them to my mother.
“Prologue. Altha. 1619. Ten days they’d held me there. Ten days, with only the stink of my own flesh for company. Not even a rat graced me with its presence. There was nothing to attract it; they had brought me no food. Only ale.”
“Your education will prepare your to be splendid wives and mothers, and your reward might be to marry Harvard men.” Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, president of Radcliffe College, in his welcoming addresses to incoming students, 1950’s.”
“Deep in space, billions of miles from Earth, an ancient machine awoke. The machine ran several simulations, quickly settling on the optimal way to eliminate the target. The question wasn’t whether it could wipe out the primitivism.”
“Approaching the museum, ready to hunt, Stephane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple. Then they purchase two tickets with cash and walk in. It’s lunchtime, stealing time, on a busy Sunday in Antwerp, Belgium, in February 1997. “
Anthony Peardew has been collecting lost things for forty years, ever since he lost the St. Teresa medal that his wife-to-be gave him right before she died. Every day he goes for a walk, picks up lost items, brings them back to his study, and labels them.
Anthony Peardew has been collecting lost things for forty years, ever since he lost the St. Teresa medal that his wife-to-be gave him right before she died. Every day he goes for a walk, picks up lost items, brings them back to his study, and labels them.
“On the first day of spring, 1911, Esther Honey, great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, dozed in her rocking chair by the wood stove in her cabin on Apple Island. Snow poured from the sky. Wind scoured the island and smacked the windows like giant hands and kicked the door like a giant heel and banked the snow up the north side of the shack until it reached the roof. The island a granite pebble in the frigid Atlantic shallows, the clouds so low their bellies scraped on the tip of the Penobscot pine at the top of the bluff.”
“Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story of children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope and - a book.”
“In a tall cabinet, on a glass shelf, lies a white porcelain rabbit. Fluorescent light is reflected in the sheen of its coat. Lifelike, plump and pretty, you can almost imagine pulling it onto your lap to stroke, but there is a tension there. The delicately sculpted ears lie flat, and its sightless milky-white eyes roll back in fear.”
“I hope that as you read the amazing story of Crow Mary you felt her spirit and her courage and strength as she fought to do what she knew to survive in the 1800’s. Both the author and I, Crow Mary’s great-granddaughter, felt her overwhelming spirit for the first time when we visited Fort Walsh, AKA Fort Farwell, a historical site in Saskatchewan, Canada. There I learned about the Cypress Hills Massacre and my great-grandmother’s part in it.”
“It began with an itch. Not a metaphorical itch to travel the world or some quarter-life crisis. But a literal, physical itch. A maddening, claw-at-your-skin, keep-you-up-at-night itch that surfaced during my senior year of college, first on the tops of my feet and then moving up my calves and thighs.”
“Amos Barrowfield realized something was wrong as soon as he came within sight of Badford. There were men working in the fields, but not as many as he expected. The road into the village was deserted but for an empty cart. Amos was a clothier, or “putter out.”
As the cover says, if you want to read “ a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond” then you must read The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes.
“The Wedding Night. The lights go out. Outside a storm is raging. It shrieks around them, it batters the tent. It feels personal, this storm. This isn’t the first time the electric has shorted. They’re beginning to feel afraid. This darkness feels somehow ominous, intent. Then from outside comes a new sound. You might almost mistake it for the wind. But it rises in pitch and volume until it is unmistakable.”
“Few know more about how movies are made than Tom Hanks - not just the technical details but the history drawn upon and the lives and relationships that must intertwine to create a motion picture. Hank’s ambitious novel is about the making of a multimillion-dollar superhero epic.”
If you’re a parent who has had similar work/family balancing issues, then you must read It. Goes. So. Fast. by NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
If you’re interested in reading a novel about the turpentine process during a hard time in our country’s history, but with a just ending, then you must read "The Saints of Swallow Hill" by Donna Everhart.
If you’re looking for a novel that’s about four enterprising women figuring out life and solving a crime at the same time, then you must read "Someone Else’s Shoes" by Jojo Moyes.
“The Writer. The story on Alice’s computer screen had been finding its way into words for more than five years, or maybe forever. Over that time, it had grown, changed, creaked, flown, gone silent and then gained its voice again, its plot taking unexpected paths, its characters turning into people she hadn’t thought they would be, just as she had.”
If you want to read a novel about what, as the jacket says, “it means to be a woman - and a killer - of a certain age,” then you must read Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn.
Richard Raytay’s book “Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” is a great read for any of you listeners who had a similar childhood. It is a mix of memoir, history lesson and travelogue.
Richard Raytay’s book “Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” is a great read for any of you listeners who had a similar childhood. It is a mix of memoir, history lesson and travelogue.
“Arabella. Richmond, 1867. The best part about working for Johnny Worsham, aside from that fact that he paid reliably, and in cold Yankee cash, was that he insisted she never wear her spectacles while on the floor. Which meant that Belle never had to really see any of the men she served, not unless they came quite close, which some of them did.”
If you’ve ever wanted to become better friends with bees, then you must read Honey and Venom by Andrew Cote.
If you’ve ever wanted to become better friends with bees, then you must read Honey and Venom by Andrew Cote.
If you’re looking for a book about the part librarians played in WWII and some of the atrocities that were heaped on those trying to help innocent people escape, then you must read The Book Spy by Alan Hlad.
“I can talk for hours about fragrances. When I’m mixing a formula, hours can pass before I stop to look around, stretch my neck or step outside the lab for a glass of water and a chat with Celeste, Delphine’s secretary."
If you’re interested in understanding just what immigrants are willing to endure in order to come to this country, then you must read Solito by Javier Zamora.
If you’re interested in a well written novel about how the Dakota held sacred the land and seeds in particular, then you must read The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson.
The author wrote about her novel, “I wanted to examine how ambition can tilt one’s moral compass. I wanted to write about a period in history when women were simultaneously fighting for equal rights and still being exploited and commodified.”
“The past is carried to us on simple things- a written page, a spoon, a glove, a bowl of water: carried by the souls who touched them, those plain relics emanate a language freed of time, a language without cadence - mute and eerie as the sound a granite planet makes giving birth to mountains, coursing its way through space.”
“Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting: 1. You must have a job to go to, 2. Never talk to strangers on the train, 3. Don’t consume hot food, 4. Never give up a seat once occupied, 5. Always pack for any eventuality. “Life is hard, Sometimes we just need to read a book that has a happy ending, renews our faith in humankind and reminds us that we should care about strangers.
If you’re looking for a well written book that might help you think through one of the controversial issues of today ,then you must read Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finley Boylan.
If you’re looking for a laugh-out-loud story about workplace inequality for women, then you must read "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus.
“Prologue. Malik. May 1969. Jaipur. It’s opening night of the Royal Jewel Cinema, which shines as brilliantly as a gemstone. Inside the theater: every one of the eleven hundred mohair seats is occupied. Still more people stand, lining the walls of the theater for the premiere. This is Ravi Singh’s big moment....I follow the rest of the group inside the lobby. Before we make it through the doors, we hear a yawning creak, then a complaining groan, and then suddenly the roar of a thousand pounds of cement, brick, rebar and drywall crashing down.”
“O’Farrell brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life and offers an unforgettable portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.”
“Prologue. Friday. Ben. His fingers hover over the keyboard. Got to get it all down. This: this is the story that’s going to make his name. He’s sitting in front of the apartment’s long windows, which look onto the central courtyard. It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere.”
“Theo couldn’t imagine wanting anything in this sadness-infused pile of discards.... There were some old paperbacks slugged into a beer carton. He was always curious about what people read. He reached down to check the titles. And that is when he saw the horse.”
If you’re interested in reading a novel that revolves around the complexities of being an Asian American in academic America, then you must read Disorientation by Elaine Chou.
“We hold a piece of women’s history in our hands every day... a piece of history created - in a roundabout fashion - by Hedy Lamarr.”
“We hold a piece of women’s history in our hands every day... a piece of history created - in a roundabout fashion - by Hedy Lamarr.”
“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back, “ she warned the gathering. “In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life. We are crossing between life and death every day."
There’s a lot to "The Marsh Queen" — a mystery to solve, family secrets, interesting facts about birds and even a love story.
The one thread that connects all the meetings/investigations is the sound of a violin piece. The story poses several questions: is life, in fact, a simulation? And, if you were able to travel back in time and lengthen someone’s life by warning them of imminent danger, would you?
If you’re looking for a book that, as the jacket says, deals with themes of familial duty, mental health, racism and the lifesaving power of friendship, then you must read Maame by Jessica George.
“She has watched while a parade of young women, raising fists and rifles, marched past the bus taking her to Bahir Dar. They stared at her an aging woman in her long drab dress, as if they did not know those who came before them. As if this were the first time a woman carried a gun.”
“In their heyday, the 'Lost Friends' ads, published in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper, went out to nearly five hundred preachers, eight hundred post offices, and more than four thousand subscription holders. The column header requested that pastors read the contents from their pulpits to spread the word of those seeking the missing.”
“In their heyday, the 'Lost Friends' ads, published in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper, went out to nearly five hundred preachers, eight hundred post offices, and more than four thousand subscription holders. The column header requested that pastors read the contents from their pulpits to spread the word of those seeking the missing.”
Bryan Stevenson in his book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption recounts his work with Walter McMillian, a black man convicted of capital murder of a white woman in a white, racially bigoted county in Alabama.
Bryan Stevenson in his book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption recounts his work with Walter McMillian, a black man convicted of capital murder of a white woman in a white, racially bigoted county in Alabama.
The novel "Homegoing" gives us a glimpse into three hundred years of black history and the injustices perpetrated on people with dark skin. It follows the family history of two half sisters who were born into two different villages in Ghana in the eighteen century.
The novel "Homegoing" gives us a glimpse into three hundred years of black history and the injustices perpetrated on people with dark skin. It follows the family history of two half sisters who were born into two different villages in Ghana in the eighteen century.
“1854. Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a prosperous merchant clan - merely a vicar’s daughter. Everyone knows that the family’s lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin Adam one day. But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados - a plantation her grandfather never told anyone he owned.”
“When we pulled him from the water, he didn’t have a scratch on him. That’s the first thing I noticed. The rest of us were all gashes and bruises, but he was unmarked, with smooth almond skin and thick dark hair matted by seawater.”
If you’re looking for novel about relationships that revolve around the gaming world, then you must read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
Years ago when we enjoyed life with a scrappy Jack Russell terrier named Little Bit, we had a poster hanging on our refrigerator that reminded us of life lessons to learn from her. Things like “live in the moment” and “don't’ hold grudges” and “show compassion.”
Years ago when we enjoyed life with a scrappy Jack Russell terrier named Little Bit, we had a poster hanging on our refrigerator that reminded us of life lessons to learn from her. Things like “live in the moment” and “don't’ hold grudges” and “show compassion.”
Kate Murphy in her book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters lays out a fundamental problem in our world today: we don’t listen and what that means for our society today.
The last thing she ever said to him was “I’m falling asleep.” In vacationing with friends, Sheryl Sandberg and her husband, Dave, were relaxing on a beach in Mexico. When Sheryl woke up an hour later, Dave was gone. They found Dave collapsed in the hotel workout room. Dave died a short while later at the hospital.
The last thing she ever said to him was “I’m falling asleep.” In vacationing with friends, Sheryl Sandberg and her husband, Dave, were relaxing on a beach in Mexico. When Sheryl woke up an hour later, Dave was gone. They found Dave collapsed in the hotel workout room. Dave died a short while later at the hospital.
The book Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America by Jared Cohen weaves personal information with the context of history to bring the challenge faced by these eight men to life.
The book Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America by Jared Cohen weaves personal information with the context of history to bring the challenge faced by these eight men to life.
“I didn’t spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi River simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex, although that certainly played a part....I hungered to see that river country when I stumbled across an account of one of the first boatmen who braved the water route that America followed toward prosperity and greatness.”
“In the summer of 1942, as the world was locked in war against Hitler, a woman crossed the sea from the Soviet Union to the United States. She was a single mother, a graduate student, a library researcher. She was a soldier, a war hero, a sniper with 309 kills to her name. She was Russia’s envoy, America’s sweetheart, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s dear friend. Her story is incredible. Her story is true. Meet Lady Death.”
Many histories of World War II focus on the battles, the generals, or the political intrigue. Giles Milton in Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare recounts stories of World War II that were never talked about or publicized and the secret people who helped win the war.
"September 28, 1918. The deadly virus stole unnoticed through the crowded cobblestone streets of Philadelphia on a sunny September day, unseen and unheard amidst the jubilant chaos of the Liberty Loan parade and patriotic marches of John Philip Sousa. More than 200,000 men, women, and children waved American flags.”
“Emma Starling didn’t come into Everton the way that took her by Maple Street Cemetery... She didn’t drive by the town square either, so she missed the celebratory sight when the four men and two teenage boys finally caught the wild boar...Boars aren’t native to New Hampshire, but here in Everton, they often dig out underneath the electric fence to escape the private hunting park that spans the Upper Valley.”
This is a fascinating window into life in India in the 1950’s when the caste system still affected Indian’s lives. As the book jacket says the Henna Artist is “Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern.”
The theme of the "The Measure" is “if you knew the number of your days” how would you change your life? Would you hunker down in your home and refrain from making human connections or would you choose to go all in and live every one of your last days to the fullest?
In Growing Up Getty by James Reginato the reader will experience emotions from empathy to humor to historical inquisitiveness all while reading of the highs and lows of one the richest and most influential families of the world.
“Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She’d lost her sister Nora and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry’s death, she decided to make one small change to her life - she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.”
“On a Sunday morning in late June, I waited with my son at the side entrance of a stately home near Cambridge, England. We stood on a stone bridge that spanned what was once a moat, the water drained, a grassy pathway at the bottom, the moat’s walls overgrown with greenery.”
Drew Magary in his book "The Night The Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage" tells the story of his recovery in the hospital and the long process after of trying to put his life back together.
Drew Magary in his book "The Night The Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage" tells the story of his recovery in the hospital and the long process after of trying to put his life back together.
Drew Magary in his book "The Night The Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage" tells the story of his recovery in the hospital and the long process after of trying to put his life back together.
“Oh, I can’t speak for the dead. And I won’t speak for the missing. I can only tell you what I think happened. Others - the dead and the missing - would probably have their own versions. Blame, I can tell you firsthand, is every bit as subjective as truth. Of course, I am also confident that the missing will never be found: the Serengeti is vast and it’s been years.”
“Oh, I can’t speak for the dead. And I won’t speak for the missing. I can only tell you what I think happened. Others - the dead and the missing - would probably have their own versions. Blame, I can tell you firsthand, is every bit as subjective as truth. Of course, I am also confident that the missing will never be found: the Serengeti is vast and it’s been years.”
“Oh, I can’t speak for the dead. And I won’t speak for the missing. I can only tell you what I think happened. Others - the dead and the missing - would probably have their own versions. Blame, I can tell you firsthand, is every bit as subjective as truth. Of course, I am also confident that the missing will never be found: the Serengeti is vast and it’s been years.”
“I had already been a lot of things in my young life - vaudeville performer, dance instructor, waitress, dishwasher, pants presser, babysitter. And other things I won’t mention. Mostly, I was always what Mamie, my mother, needed me to be to earn money. Today was the first day of the life that I chose. By some miracle, I had won a scholarship to study at St. Mary’s Hospital of Nursing located in Galveston.”
“I had already been a lot of things in my young life - vaudeville performer, dance instructor, waitress, dishwasher, pants presser, babysitter. And other things I won’t mention. Mostly, I was always what Mamie, my mother, needed me to be to earn money. Today was the first day of the life that I chose. By some miracle, I had won a scholarship to study at St. Mary’s Hospital of Nursing located in Galveston.”
“I had already been a lot of things in my young life - vaudeville performer, dance instructor, waitress, dishwasher, pants presser, babysitter. And other things I won’t mention. Mostly, I was always what Mamie, my mother, needed me to be to earn money. Today was the first day of the life that I chose. By some miracle, I had won a scholarship to study at St. Mary’s Hospital of Nursing located in Galveston.”
“We have your daughter. It’s the first Tuesday in September, the afternoon of her one very bad day, and Frida is trying to stay on the road. On the voice mail, the officer tells her to come to the station immediately.”
“We have your daughter. It’s the first Tuesday in September, the afternoon of her one very bad day, and Frida is trying to stay on the road. On the voice mail, the officer tells her to come to the station immediately.”
“We have your daughter. It’s the first Tuesday in September, the afternoon of her one very bad day, and Frida is trying to stay on the road. On the voice mail, the officer tells her to come to the station immediately.”
“Sometimes I think about the girls Kim, Debra, and I once were, and it astounds me the paths we took. I used to believe that it was their daring that led to their undoing and that ours was a story about choices - three girls who made vastly different ones. But it’s really a story about second chances. Who gets them, who doesn’t, who makes the most of them.”
“A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country’s secret stash of deadly chemical poisons: all these play roles in a relentlessly escalating crisis.”
“When did USA become shorthand for the United States of Anxiety? From the moment Americans wake up, we’re bombarded with all-new terrifying news about crime, the environment, politics, and stroke-inducing foods we’ve been enjoying for years.”
This book was so good that I felt it was necessary to veer from our usual adult titles and share it with you. Gary Schmidt’s book The Wednesday Wars, published in 2007 is a Newbery honor book.
“I am your maid. I’m the one who cleans your hotel room who enters like a phantom when you’re out gallivanting for the day, no care at all about what you’ve left behind, the mess, or what I might see when you’re gone.”
“She immediately knows something is wrong The door to Marik’s house is ajar, and there is a black car blocking the street just a few meters away. Not really a car - there aren’t many cars in Ivanovo...Who is this wagon waiting for?”
“My Seven Black Fathers tells the stories of the men who have shaped my sense of what it means to be a Black man in twenty-first century America...My Seven Black Fathers retells the story of who Black fathers are. My seven Black fathers demonstrate there’s no one right way to mentor and there’s no standard fit.”
“To Emmett, all the houses in this part of the country looked like they’d been dropped from the sky. The Watson house just looked like it’d had a rougher landing. The roof line sagged on either side of the chimney and the window frames were slanted just enough that half the windows wouldn’t quite open and the other half wouldn’t quite shut. In another moment, they’d be able to see how the paint had been shaken right off the clapboard.”
“Like all humans, my mind is wired to look for the story in any situation. Where’s the beginning, the middle, the twist, the end? And what’s the moral?”
The Legends Club begins in the spring of 1980 when Mike Krzyzewski was named the head basketball coach at Duke University, and Jim Valvano to North Carolina State. Dean Smith had already been the coach at North Carolina for 19 years.
“Spring, 1923. Ada smelled the swamp before she reached it. The mingling of sulfur and rot worked with memory to knot her stomach and burn the back of her throat. She was returning with little more than she had taken with her a year before.”
“I learned about Belle from a passing docent, who took a few moments from her busy schedule to describe this astonishing woman, and, in so doing, offered me a new lens through which to view the Pierpont Morgan Library, its collection, and the time in which it was created.”
It’s July 1539 and the lives of three women are about to converge in England. Mary Boleyn of Norfolk House is to return to court, Ann, Duchess of Cleves is having her portrait painted in anticipation of being chosen by Henry the VIII as his next queen and fourteen year old Katherine of Norfolk House, a vain and silly girl is adding up her possessions.
“Bobby Kennedy was a personal hero to a multitude of Americans... They loved him as a fellow patriot who believed a great country could also be a good one.”
“Jerusza’s mother...used to tell her that the knowing of impossible things was a gift from God passed down through maternal blood of only the most fortunate Jewish women. Jerusza,....was certain at times that it was a curse instead, but whatever it was it had been her burden all her life to follow the voices that echoed through the forests.”
“In the 1580’s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins. The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.”
If you are looking to read about the human condition, danger, excitement and exceptional heroics then you must read Julian Sancton’s book Madhouse at the End of the Earth.
If you’re looking for a mystery that’s both a commentary on the prejudice that still exists in our world today and a story about how one caring adult can make a huge difference in a young person’s life, then you must read The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb.
“Even before the cats, before the dogs, before the chickens, before the turkeys, before the ducks and the guinea fowl and the betta fish and the Black Angus cattle, I was always a little animalish.”
“Doug Tompkins spent the first half of his life scaling the peaks of capitalism, founding iconic companies including THE NORTH FACE and ESPRIT. Then he realized he had climbed the wrong mountain. Moving to a remote cabin in Patagonia without electricity or running water, he launched one of the greatest conservation efforts the world has ever seen.”
“I never know what to expect when I open my door to new clients. The preliminary phone call only reveals so much. In this case, it came from a woman who introduced herself as Marissa Bishop. My marriage is in trouble, she began. I need to talk to my husband about something, but it’s a bit complicated. I thought if we came in together -“
If you’re ready to read a novel about the COVID experience, one that is about the triumph of the human spirit, then you must read Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult.
“Titanic’s fate was not preordained, it was ordained by the failings of men in critical moments.” I’m Mark Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and William Hazelgrove separates fact from fiction, reality from myth in his book One Hundred and Sixty Minutes, The Race to Save the RMS Titanic.
As the book jacket says, “Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold.” There are four or five murder suspects and like any good mystery, it’s not solved until the last pages of the book.
Clark and Bryant have been podcasting since 2008 about all kinds of interesting things and published a book of twenty-seven of them. They include: Mr. Potato Head, The History of Income Tax, The Pet Rock, Trillionaires, Jack Kevorkian, and Dog Smells.
Crossroads is the name of the church’s youth group, but it is also where these five people stand in their lives. If you’re looking for a story with vivid characters, then you must read "Crossroads" by Jonathan Franzen.
If you are looking for a story of the human side of men in combat during the final months of World War II, then Don Brown and Captain Jerry Yellin’s book The Last Fighter Pilot is a must read.
A stranger, Savannah, appears at Joy and Stan’s door with a bloody forehead seeking shelter from an abusive boyfriend. They take her in and in exchange, Savannah cooks and cleans for them until a connection between her and the Delaney family is discovered. Then she disappears and foul play is suspected.
Esme comes to realize that there are many words relating to women that are deemed not important enough to be included in the dictionary. She collects these words and stores them in a box that she labels “The Dictionary of Lost Words.”
“Imagine a place, a special place, where the husbands are everywhere, yes, but instead of just putting the dishes in the sink when finished eating, they put them in the dishwasher, they carry up the items left on the stairs and put them away, they refill children’s water glasses at 3 a.m. and lead sleepy toddlers back to their own beds, they write thank you notes, etc.”
Laurence Bergreen’s book In Search of a Kingdom tells the true story of the heroics of Francis Drake and the wisdom of Elizabeth I that laid the foundations that would impact world history for centuries.
This is such a well crafted story with some great questions to ponder...how would you feel if you were invisible, if no one remembered you? How do you convince yourself that you are enough? What are the consequences of making a deal with the devil?
As the fly leaf says, “Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, the book explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.“
In his book Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sport and Culture Forever L. Jon Wertheim sets the stage for a recounting a year that had monumental impact on sports and culture and all of life.
“Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story of children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope and - a book.”
This would be an interesting book to discuss in a book discussion group...do you believe that God gives the power to heal to others? And what do you think the role of women in the church should be?
“February 29, 1944. I have gone by many names. Some of them are real - but most are carefully constructed personas to get me through checkpoints and across borders. They are lies scribbled on forged travel documents. Typed neatly in government files, Splashed across wanted posters. My identity is an ever-shifting thing that adapts to the need at hand. Tonight, I am Hélène.”
In 1894 a Leper Home was opened in Carville, Louisiana. In 1921, the United States Public Health Service took control of the site and it became the national leprosarium. People from all over the country who were diagnosed with leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, were forced to quarantine there and many never left.
“Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity.”
“Tensions at Yalta threatened to tear apart the wartime alliance of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin just as victory was close at hand. Catherine Grace Katz uncovers the dramatic story of the three daughters who were chosen by their fathers to travel with them to Yalta.”
“When we pulled him from the water, he didn’t have a scratch on him. That’s the first thing I noticed. The rest of us were all gashes and bruises, but he was unmarked, with smooth almond skin and thick dark hair matted by seawater.”
For those of you who have children you adore, you’ll understand when I say that I would do just about anything for mine, well, short of breaking the law.
"Kintbury, March 1840. ‘Miss Austen’ the voice came from behind her. ‘Forgive me.’ She turned. ‘I did not know you were there.’ Cassandra managed a smile but stayed where she was on the vicarage doorstep. She would dearly like to be more effusive...but was simply too tired to move. Her old bones had been shaken apart by the coach ride from her home in Chawton, and the chill wind off the river was piercing her joints. She stood by her bags and watched Isabella approach.”
“To be fair, death is hard!..We can’t make death fun, but we can make learning about death fun. Death is science and history, art and literature. It bridges every culture and unites the whole of humanity! Many people, including me, believe that we can control some of our fears by embracing death, learning about it and asking as many questions as possible. In that case, when I die, will my cat eat my eyeballs?”
“In the autumn of 1939, Hitler’s advance seemed unstoppable. German military communications were related using hand ciphers, teleprinter codes, and above all Enigma machines - portable cipher devices that scrambled orders into nonsense so they could be relayed via Morse code over radio transmitters, then unscrambled in the field. Germany thought Enigma was unreadable. They were wrong.”
“Walk had once climbed that tree with Vincent King, in a time so far from now it would barely count. He rested a shaking hand on his gun, the other on his belt. He caught sight of the girl, moving against the crowd, her brother’s hand in hers as he struggled to match her pace. Duchess and Robin, the Radley children. He met them at a half run because he knew all there was to know about them. The boy was five and cried silent tears, the girl had just turned thirteen and did not ever cry.”
“...and so infidel-like he would call me a whore and concoct the most wild stories as to my behavior and then he would strike me in the name of discipline as if I were an untutored child.” From the Petition for Divorce filed by Mary Deerfield, 1662.
“A person of talent hits a target that no one else can hit; a person of genius hits a target that no one else can see. A talented person deals skillfully with the immediately evident world. A genius, however, sees what is hidden from the rest of us.”