Just finished The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden for book group. A weird and creepy thriller. A quick and easy read...not sure how much discussion it will trigger though. I won't make this meeting though to find out. And I see it's now part of a series...I would consider reading #2 if I was looking for that kind of thing. 3+ stars. Perfect for keeping your attention on an airplane trip.

Next up: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Our book club will be discussing Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng this Sunday. A grim novel of a very near future of ethnic hatred, injustice and control--but also love. Extremely well written. The discussion should be lively.

I just picked up the new Ian McEwan book, What We Can Know. I have to finish something else first, but I have it for two weeks, and it's only 300 pages. I am reading Queen Lucia, by E F Benson, the first in a series of six novels about social life in an English village--very Barbara Pym-y, but no curates! LOL

I have not read any of McFadden's books, but, judging by the shelving I do at our library, a lot of people do.

I read the EF Benson series maybe 20 ish years ago and absolutely totally 10000% adored it. I understand there was a BBC series but I never saw it. Mapp and Lucia and all of them, I still remember them fondly. I devoured that series. What a treasure

. I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

I may have to buy my own copy of Joy Williams Concerning the Future of Souls. I'm reading one or two of the brief chapters at a time. I wouldn't want to miss any of Devil's opinions about anything. 4 Stars.

I'm enjoying the slow reveal of a defended, wounded, seventy-plus divorcee, Sybil Stone Van Antwerp -- the marvelous creation of author Virginia Evans in The Correspondent. 4 Stars.

Elmer -- DH has requested the audio book of the mystery you recommended. He stated listening to books as his eyesight weakened too much for novels. I think audio books are not very different from the radio programs we enjoyed as youngsters.

Annie, I read Under the Banner of Heaven some years ago and was enthralled by it as you will be too I’m sure. You would also

enjoy INTO THIN AIR and INTO THE WILD. Excellent reads, 5 star and good books for club discussions.

debra

The Correspondent was such fun. There's another good one: One Woman Show, by Christine Coulson. I will not ruin it by describing it. It was so cleverly done. It's a one night read--no pressure.

Thanks djacob....I read Into the Wild a few years back. Given the story, hard to say I 'enjoyed' it, but it was well told.

I loved The Correspondent too! I think it’s my favorite pick for 2025. It’s an easy read and SO charmming,

It doesn't hurt that the characters writing to one another in The Correspondent close so many letters with, "What are you reading?" Also, since adoption is known as "the A-word" in my home, I appreciated the book's treatment of the pain that is always there -- an unpopular 'notion' when people want what they want.

I read and enjoyed The Correspondent earlier this year.

Just finished Nobody’s Girl…very said not

very sad. I won’t say more because it’ll just get flagged and deleted.

I have to read Mrs. Dalloway for book group next week. Our book group is alternating modern books with old/classic novels this year.

Sueb20, read The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, after Mrs. Dalloway. There is an opera of The Hours, with Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli o'Hara. It was filmed for PBS, and you can probably find it. I saw it at the Met, and it was just wonderful. I know there is a movie too, but I have not seen it.

Sueb, who is the author of Nobody's Girl? There are a few with that title.

Just finished The Correspondent. Let me say at the outset that it must just be me, because it got good reviews here. I found the book was too much and too little all at once. Too many characters, too many issues clamoring for resolution, and little opportunity taken by the author to delve deeper insight into any of the characters or issues. For instance, the main character dons her legal profession as her central identity and it's also the novel's central plot device, but it's a little threadbare for the importance it purportedly has to the novel. (The main character was the long-time judicial law clerk to an illustrious judge. You could easily substitute her background with that of an assistant surgeon who was willfully indifferent to the patient's outcome due to her own personal circumstances and the novel would still be intact.)

Overall, I found it missed the mark in terms of characterization, plot, and writing. The epistolary form did little to the writing and often led to redundancies. I hope this is not too harsh, but I'm coming out of the feeling that a Sunday devoted to reading this book was not well-spent.

I'm reading the new Ian McEwan, All We Can Know. It's a little dystopian, but that is not the focus of the story. It's no Atonement or Saturday, but I am enjoying it so far.

Faftris, I love Barbara Pym! I’m looking forward to Queen Lucia. Thank you!!

Example of Pym humor:

Barbara Pym’s novel Some Tame Gazelle (1950, Chapter 1):

“The new curate seemed quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed when he sat down.”

Because I loved The Wedding People, I looked for Allison Espach's other novels. Notes On Your Sudden Disapearance is proving just as *real*. Surviving younger sister Sally copes with the loss of her three years older, idolized sister/best friend just as both are navigating adolescence. Espach has put me completely into the before and after in Sally's Average White American Household of the recent past. I'm halfway and will be sorry to leave her world behind. 4 Stars.

Can’t bold on my iPad (🤷) so I am reading: Very interesting so far…..need to pay attention as there are several stories going on that will be interwoven at some point. There’s a typically dysfunctional family whose members haven’t spoken to each other in years. The mother dies and leaves a video which the lawyer has been instructed to have them watch together in his presence. They are finding out information intentionally kept from until now. So far 3-4 stars as the story is a bit challenging to keep up with.

debra

^^^ I just read that a couple of weeks ago and gave it 4 stars.

I forgot to update that I finished The Frozen River. For some reason, although I had heard mostly raves about it, I wasn't eager to read it but finally got with the program. Anyway I thought it was such a captivating read and the fact that it was historical fiction was even more impressive. I thought it was quite interesting and I loved the descriptions of daily life.

I gave it 4.5 stars and it would be good for a book club discussion.

I started reading The Art of Getting Things Done by David Allen, recommended by KSWL, and the beginning really got me . I'm a bit further along, and while it's very good, I don't know that it's the right book for me now. I'm going to stick with it but I think I am reading it too casually.

It is a very good book though.

debra, if you can't bold, can you do all caps? Just want some way for the title to stand out so people skimming looking for a specific book rec can find it quicker.

Just finished Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. 3 star, not for book group unless they have a particular interest in mormonism. I learned a lot about the religion and it's history, but it turned into a bit of a slog for me. Some parts were more interesting than others. But he unfortunately did not stick to a timeline but went back and forth a couple of times which then led to redundancies. While ostensibly about a murder, I could tell he really wanted to write about the history of the religion and used the murder as an excuse to do it. At the end in his notes, he essentially says as much.

Next up: Malice Aforethought by Frances Iles, pen name for Anthony Berkeley Cox. First published in 1931, it is considered to be one of the top 100 crime novels of all time by the Crime Writers Assn. Looking forward to this one.

Annie, I will do that!

debra

chisue, I’m halfway through The Wedding People and finding it a thoroughly enjoyable page turner . Will recommend to my book club.

I finished It Ends with Us. I have figured out why she LIKELY wrote it to the way she did. She was treading lightly, because she based the main characters on her parents. She's in a unique position. And I think it helped me appreciate her point of view more. She's in a unique position because she's a writer, and knows the information, but left with the predicament to keep the horrible behavior, understandable. Less fluff than first hit me, and I was frustrated, because I thought she had such an important task to conquer. Could she have done more?

But I haven't walked in her shoes. She may have the right balance of pity and disgust She probably has the right balance. We can't hate either character, because so many people are in this position, but not worthy of hate. And moreover, we just need to love. We don't need to place blame.

It's good for a book club, because there's a lot of discussion. My rating is harder to give. I'll refrain at this point, because I need to digest a lot.

Ending up liking not loving The Wedding Guests. Next up is Theft

by Abdulrazak Gurnah , who won the Nobel prize for lit in 2021. Just because it looked interesting__and the Nobel prize. We shall see.

For fun, here is Oprah's book club list of all 119 books. The first is The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard; #119 is A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar.

I liked Espach's The Wedding People enough to try Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance. Her characters meet some challenges I have not met. Notes peels back a picture-perfect family coping (and failing to cope) with a grief that is swamping them. There's some similarity to Wedding People in the examination of what plans and dreams are not, after all, set in stone.

I just finished I See You Called in Dead by John Kenney. An obituary writer, while drunk and depressed, wrote his own obit, filled with items that had no relationship with the truth. He was horrified the next day when he found out it had been published in his newspaper. The book was funny, sad, philosophic, and I loved it. BTW it seems one cannot be fired when one is dead. so he is in a sort of limbo concerning his job. 4.5 stars. I think it would be great for a book club.

I'm in the minority about The Correspondent. It wasn't a good as I hoped. In my mind it would be as good as the book -- whose title escapes my mind -- where the woman in the US corresponds with the book seller in London. It wasn't.

That's 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff.