A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

Monday, Feb. 28, 2022--San Antonio

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske was listed as a best book for fall in EW reviews last year, so I put it on my list of books to consider reading.  When it showed up on Libby with a wait period of 10 weeks, I put a hold on it, and it only recently became available.  It is so different from most books I read.  It's a novel with the basis that members of some families have the inherited ability to create magic spells, and it has been kept entirely secret from society in general.  There is even a secret government agency that accepts any reports of possible use of magic and a secret archive of the names of everyone who has inherited this trait.  The story involves some mysterious reports of magic being reported to have been used in some attacks against others who possess the magic ability and the disappearance of some of them.  One of the two main characters is a man who gets posted to head the secret government records office who doesn't possess any magic abilities and doesn't even know that such people exist.  He is posted there by the Prime Minister who doesn't even know what this office does (due to not being magical himself) and just needs what he thinks sounds as a low-level position where he can help a young man who is a Lord but has not inherited a fortune due to his parents having given most of their money away to charities.  The other main character is the liaison officer who meets once a week to get the most important examples of reports of magic and reports them to an office higher up in government.  (Think of it like a story involving the man who is head of a government office to collect all reports of UFOs and the liaison officer who meets weekly to see if anything is worth reporting upward for further investigation.)  At first, I was surprised about premise of certain people being able to use magic and by the fact that I felt somewhat like I was reading a book written for adolescents.  But it turned out to be an adult novel that was interesting and thought-provoking.  It is the first novel in a set of two as the story continues.  Book II is entitled A Restless Truth (The Last Binding).  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

 Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022--San Antonio

Bewilderment by Richard Powers is a science fiction book that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  It is the story of a father who is an astrobiologist professor and researcher and his son who struggles with handling daily social life.  A fellow researcher has developed a way to train the mind to "feel" emotions of others, and uses the son as a subject, since his deceased mother had been a subject at the beginning of the study to set up a recorded base of memories of specific emotions.  At the same time, the world is in trouble politically by lack of concern for the environment and people's affects on it.  The father's research involves searching for planets with the potential for intelligent life and creating credible possibilities of the form life on each planet might be.   The book alternates between chapters of what is happening in the life of the father and son and chapters of different planets with descriptions of what life might be like on them.  The story of the father and son and what is happening on earth is interesting.  I found the stories of life on the different planets to be less interesting, especially after reading a few of them.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022--San Antonio

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is the third book I have read by this author.  It is a good book, but I would rank it 3rd in sequence in terms of reading pleasure with The Nickel Boys first and The Underground Railroad second.  "Shuffle" tells the story of a black man whose father was a criminal.  The son was determined to be respected and made his way through business college and had a successful career running a furniture store--at first, selling used furniture, then a mixture of new and used, and finally selling only the finest lines of new furniture.  He married a woman from a wealthy Harlem family to the disgruntlement of her father.  He also finds himself occasionally mixed up in criminal activities due to his cousin who is like a brother, since he lived with the cousin's family for a few years when his father went to jail for his criminal activities.  The story covers a period of time during sit-ins, race riots, etc.  Throughout it all, the main character keeps his head down and his eyes on a steady progression to a better life for him and his family.  I gave the book a rating of 4 stars out of 5.

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

Friday, Feb. 4, 2022--San Antonio

A Burning by Megha Majumdar is set in India is shares some characteristics of other Indian novels and short stories by a number writers such a Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and Kiran Desai in that it tells the story of the suffering of the poor of India and the corruption within the government there.  This particular story ties the two together by telling the story of 4 main characters--a young student from a very poor family who is intelligent and has great prospects in life, a female politician whose party is trying to win the next election no matter what the costs or consequences, a PE teacher from the young student's school who sees her potential but becomes involved in the corrupt party of the politician, and a hijra (a transgender male-to-female) who has joined with other hijras, as is typical in India, to live as a group and make a living by blessing weddings, births, etc., who is being tutored in English by the young students, and who is taking acting classes with the dream of becoming a movie star.  People get caught up in lies and corruption due to their desires to have a better life.  The book is an easy read.  And I could appreciate the style of the wording used because it matches the patterns that are common by Indians who speak English as a second language (meaning that the organization of the words often fits the pattern that the words are organized in the Indian languages rather than what is the normal organization within formal English).  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.