Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kenedy

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025--San Antonio

Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kenedy is a novel from 10 years ago that fits within what I have read is a current trend of gay romance hockey stories.  It is well enough written that it was been translated into 10 languages.  There was one "hitch" at the beginning that made me question whether it was well written or not; I don't recall what it was.  But it turned into a well-written, funny, and entertaining story about two boys who attended an elite summer hockey training camp throughout high school, didn't talk to each other throughout their college years because of a situation that occurred the last night of their last season at the camp, but met again when they were both drafted for NHL teams at the end of their college careers, and spent a final summer together back at the camp as coaches.  One has been openly gay throughout college.  The other has believed he was straight but is now, in the summer before they report to their teams, discovering he is bisexual.  The one who is bisexual is questioning whether he really wants to go professional as a goalie since there is a good chance he might not get to play much and that he might be sent to a lower level team.  He enjoys coaching and starts wondering if he might be better off not reporting to his team and trying to find a job as a defensive coach for a minor league hockey team.  The one who is gay wants to make it as a professional, but he feels he must return "to the closet" at least during his first year as a profession due to homophobia being a known problem within professional sports.  As with most romance novels of any kind, I found it had more and longer descriptive sexual encounters than I really wanted to read; they just slowed down the progression of the story.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025--San Antonio

Penguin named The Stolden Queen by Fiona Davis one of the best books for the first half of 2025, but I disagree.   A major error occurred about halfway through as the 19-year-old character Annie, who has been taking care of her mother for 10 years in a hand-to-month living situation, rushes to their small basement apartment to quickly pack a bag and PICK UP HER PASSPORT!  Apparently neither the Columbia University graduate author nor her editor (presumably also a college graduate and living in New York) had the mental awareness to realize that a young woman in that situation would NOT have a passport and be unable to plan to leave the country for the first time in her life with a two-day notice.  As the fast-paced action took off from that point to its conclusion, there were just too many coincidences taking place at too fast a pace.  I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of the book and I finished it, but my rating kept falling after the mid-point until at the end of the book it landed at a generous 3 1/2 stars out of 4--not a qualifier for being named a best book of the first half of 2025!

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngodi Ardichi

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025--San Antonio

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngodi Arichi was named as a top book of the first half of 2025 by BBC and an anticipated book by many known reviewers.  It is built around the lives of 4 African women--3 living in the US and 1 in Nigeria--who have all become close friends.  There are ups and downs in their lives which they share with each other.  All face problems because of cultural and family expectations.  Each looks back and questions decisions they have made in their lives.  Three are wealthy.  Two of those are passing the age of having their own babies while still unmarried.  The poor one is a hotel maid and is raped by a very high-ranking international politician in his hotel room.  When she "became of age" she was also "cut" (female circumcision) by her female family members.  The one living in Nigeria works for a bank which colludes with politicians for them to steal money through corrupt practices and becomes so sick of it that she starts stealing herself--not to have the money for herself but to provide "loans" to individual village women to expand their local businesses with the requirement only that they pay her back by helping at least one other woman in return.  Desires, relationship experiences, and the background histories for all 4 women are revealed over time.  It's a complex book, at times an uncomfortable story, and about 1/3 longer than most novels, so it took me two weeks to read the book.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Dream State by Eric Puchner

 Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025--San Antonio

Dream State by Eric Puchner has been named a top book of the first half of 2025 by BBC and others.  It is a story of chosen families and birth families, of lifetime friendships, of incidents that affect one's life and lives of others, of changes in society over time, of global warming and its harmful effects over the long term in various ways--on wild animals, forests, neighborhoods, people, etc.  At the center of the story are 3 people--Charlie and Garret (two best friends) and CeCe (the woman they have both loved).  But the story goes far beyond these three to encompass the lives of their grandparents, their parents, their children, their other lifetime friends, tragedies that occur in their lives, the choices they have made in their lives, and the changes (both societal and personal) over time in their lives.  I found the book to be fascinating.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5. 

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025--San Antonio

One Golden Summer by Carley Foretune is a "summer romance novel" which was listed as one of the best books so far in 2025 and which the library offered with "no holds" via the Libby app last weekend, so I downloaded it.  It's a good book.  There is wonderful bickering dialog between the two main characters that kept me laughing over and over again.  Alice, a professional photographer returns to a summer cabin on a lake for two months with her grandmother who is recovering from hip-replacement surgery.  It's the place where, at 17, she was given her first camera by her grandmother and where she took her favorite personal photo of all time of 3 local teenagers in a boat--persons she never met because she was too shy to interact with others at the time.  Now, 16 years later, she discovers that the nearby neighbor Charlie who was asked to make the cabin ready for them at the request of the owner is the older "boy" in the photo where he is lovingly looking at his younger brother with his girlfriend.  Charlie is 35 now with a massive ego and the reputation of being the town charmer and a love-um-and-leave-um ladies man.  They seem to be attracted to each other and are soon spending all day with each other while both are being very cautious and insisting that it is just a friendship.  Each has a reason for resisting it going beyond that.  Like all romance novels, in my opinion there are way too many lengthy descriptions of sexual attraction and semi-sexual interactions--things that other readers want but which I find are greatly distracting from the continuing development of the love story.  But the love story itself is well written and a pleasure to read.  I gave the book 4 1/4 stars out of 5.

The Foreign Student by Susan Choi

Monday, Aug. 4, 2025--San Antonio

The Foreign Student by Susan Choi won a prize as the best first novel from an Asian-American organization.  I enjoyed the book very much.  It really is two stories of two different people with limited interaction between the two.  One of the characters is a young girl named Catherine just coming into womanhood at the age of 14 with a major crush on a professor twice her age or more who is a friend of the family.  The professor takes advantage of the situation--establishing a sexual relationship that continues summer after summer as she and her family keep returning to their summer home in Tennessee.  Eventually the mother learns of the relationship and tries to sever ties, but the girl grows into a woman still maintaining the relationship with the professor who is the only person she has ever had as a sexual partner.  But as a maturing woman in her mid-20s, a strain is developing between the two of them.  The other main character is a young man from Korea named Chung.  After WWII, because he can speak English, he is working with the US Information service in Korea helping translate local news stories to English for the foreign reporters about the unrest and back-and-forth movements in the line between the communist forces and the American-backed Korean forces.  His story involves a close friendship with a communist sympathizer his age, a perceived close friendship with his young American boss,  What is happening in this long war is tragically covered in detail in the novel as Chang gets caught up in it.  After the war ends, Chang applies for scholarships at many American universities and eventually is accepted on a full scholarship to The University of the South (Sewanee) which is where Catherine is continuing to live and have her troubled affair of a decade or more with the professor and where Chang continues to be called "Chuck" as he was in the USIA office in Seoul.    Sewanee is a small university that is its own town and only has one small general store, so everyone there knows Catherine and the gossip about her relationship with the professor and everyone is curious about the "Chuck" (who they think is Chinese or Japanese but reference him as an "Oriental") who is new to this southern Tennessee town.  During his first year at the university there is very limited interaction between Catherine and Chang.  They seem to be drawn together as outliers in the community who have sympathy for each other and may even find the other fascinating, but no real relationship develops between them.  The very end of the novel is when everything starts goes to pot.  Catherine goes to New Orleans because her mother is dying and because it is a good excuse to think about whether she really wants to marry the controlling professor who she has somewhat forced to propose to her.  Chung has taken a summer job in Chicago--a miserable, dirty job thumbing through old books to remove anything inside, ripping the binding off, and sending the book upstairs for the edges of the pages to be trimmed and a new binding attached.  How will they tolerate this summer of unhappiness?    Will Catherine return to her professor?  Will Chung, who keeps being accused by his supervisor of stealing the money that is often in old books rather than giving it to her, keep putting his own limited money into books?  What can happen to change their circumstances with the book almost ending?  I gave the book 4 1/4 stars out of 5.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Wednesday, July 30, 2925--San Antonio

Audition by Katie Kitamura is what I consider to be an intellectual novel--one that is constructed in a way that the reader has to think, question, reason, etc.  I almost didn't read it because some of the comments I read made it sound as if it might be confusing.  But I picked it up and never wanted to stop reading it although I never got really excited about reading it.  It has characters that are interesting, but ones that grab you and make you love them.  And it is beautifully written. At 50% when I had ideas of where the story might be going, there was instead a major turn.  At 75% when I was guessing what was really happening (which turned out to be true), it was announced in the news that the book had been longlisted for the Booker Prize this year--the only nominee I have yet read and one that maybe deserves to be shortlisted in a few weeks or months when as they pare down the list to the most deserving.  In the final 5% of the novel there was an added surprise.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Monday, July 28, 2025--San Antonio

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White is a magical fantasy novel.  It takes place in a empire ruled and powered by an all-powerful god/goddess with supernatural gifts.   There are several provinces with each ruled by a "Blessed" who passes the ruling down to one of his/her children who receive their blessing (their own unique power that manifests usually before adulthood).  At the time of the story, the god ruling the empire, who uses much of his strength to maintain a wall to keep enemies of the empire from overrunning it, is growing old and weak.  The goddess who will take over from him, is bringing all of the children/young adults who have received their blessings on a traditional voyage to a sacred mountain so they can officially be enshrined as the new leaders of their individual provinces.  But there are problems in this land.  It is expensive to keep it safe from its enemies.  Some provinces are richer than others.  Some of the blesseds are considered to be lesser than others.  Some have ambitions to change the system.  And murders start occurring on the voyage.  The protagonist is from the lowest of the low provinces.  He hates the whole system and makes no attempt to hide it.  He is also humorous, so he is not taken seriously.  He is pudgy.  And he is gay and in love with one of the other blesseds who is ignoring him and has become engaged with a female.  But he is also curious and intelligent.  As the murders stack up, he and two others among the lower cast blesseds team up to try to figure out what is going on--who is doing this and why.  It's a fun premise.  The statements and thoughts of the protagonist are often laugh-out-loud funny.  The love story is one that the reader wants to succeed.  But the structure of the story has problems.  Maybe that is because it supposedly started on TikTok--brief entries that became so popular it was turned into a book.  I was enjoying reading the book throughout; it was after I had finished that I started realizing its weaknesses.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5 overall with a rating of 4 out of 5 for the pleasure of it having such a funny and interesting main character.  

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Sunday, July 20, 2025--San Antonio

I paused about 20% of the way into The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and read a novel I had had on hold that became available.  I just had not felt "involved" in the Erdrich book.  After finishing the other novel, I returned to this book, though, and found myself really enjoying the story as it went along.  It was quite compelling and entertaining until about the 85% point.  Then I found it less interesting again.  I had previously read The Round House by her, and had found it to be "almost perfect," and I had read 20% of The Night Watchman by her and quit the book completely  Overall, I'm glad I read this latest book, however I can't give it a better rating than 3 1/2 stars out of 5. 

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

Tuesday, July 15, 2025--San Antonio 

I wanted to enjoy The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong more than I did.  The "story" didn't start until too many pages in--pages that I kept thinking, "Why am I reading all of this?"  Overall, the book seems a bit of a hodgepodge.  A review I read suggested it was if an editor never handled it and the company just published it as originally written.  Vuong is talented with words, but I have to agree that there was too much book beyond the story.  The story was fascinating and interesting when it did come around.  Unfortunately, I am a bit tired of the level of drug abuse that characters in modern novels display, though.  And, although the characterization of Sony as a young man dwelling constantly on the Civil War is realistic in terms of what I know about symptoms of autism, I have encountered such characters too often in TV shows and books recently.  It's easier to like spending so much time with them if they are loved family members, I'm sure.  As a casual reader, I got too much of a dose of Sony in this book.  I wonder how much of this book is true to Vuong's own life?  If much of it is, he should write a sequel explaining how he turned his life around--moving on from the person he was at the end of this novel (dependent on drugs, lying to his mother about being in medical school, finding a way to support himself while becoming the author he desired to be to be, etc.  I rate this book at 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Swift River by Essie Chambers

 Monday, June 30, 2025--San Antonio

Swift River by Essie Chambers is an interesting novel.  It was named a best book of 2024 by many online publications, and I liked the story.  The problem I had with it was that I just wasn't motivated to go back to it quickly.  In other words, it isn't a page-turner.  I was interested, but not excited by it.  The story incorporates a number of aspects that have affected the lives of Blacks in America--the immigration from the South to the northern manufacturing areas, sundown cities that ran all of the blacks out of their city, mixed-race marriages and how families react to them, etc.  The protagonist is a 16-year-old mixed (white/black) race girl who weighs over 300 lbs. and is the only "black" person living in her town since her father disappeared 7 years ago leaving her there with her white mother and grandmother.  But it back-tracts to tell the stories of her family when they lived in Alabama and left for better opportunities and of when all but her aunt (a mid-wife and trained by the local doctor to even perform other medical duties and was, therefore, valuable to the community) were eventually run out of the northern factory city of Swift River where they had settled.  Life has been hard for the protagonist, and she dreams of leaving the hard-scrabble life she and her mother lead to find a place where she can fit in better, make friends, and go to college.  During the time she plans for this, she carries on a communication with an aunt still living back in Alabama which answers her questions about her family history, and she wonders if her disappeared father died 7 years ago or is just living elsewhere.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

Thursday, June 19, 2025--San Antonio

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig is the story of Grace--a retired school teacher who is depressed and lonely.  She feels guilty for not having gone out with her 10-year-old son on a day when he died and for having had a one-time dalliance with a colleague which she kept secret from her husband.  Her life is essentially meaningless.  Then she gets word from a lawyer that a long ago fellow teacher has remembered her kindly for having invited her to spend Christmas with her rather than letting her be alone and has left her a home on the island of Ibiza.  Not wanting to take advantage of the opportunity at first, Grace eventually takes a leap of faith and goes to the island.  There, her life takes a turn as she makes new friends and finds purpose in trying to help protect a nature preserve.  The reader will have to take a leap of faith, too, since there are supernatural science fiction elements to the story.  But read it and enjoy the adventure.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt

Saturday, June 14, 2025--San Antonio

All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read.  It is a memoir of and Irish man who grew up west of Liverpool hiding his real self in so many ways to try to fit into life there--working to lose his Irish accent, to hide any indications that he might be gay, etc.  Currently a professor at Trinity College in Dublin, a reviewer for the Irish Times, and an award-winning poet, the book covers the part of his life before--when a child discovering the church he loved didn't really love what he was, yearning to fit in and be accepted by others in school, yearning even more to have physical contact with males, discovering on his own that he could meet others by cruising in dark, possibly dangerous places in the evenings, falling in love as a graduate student only to learn have his Swedish lover to become a victim of SAD (the depression so common with people who live in northern climates) and try to commit suicide.  What I liked the most about the book is the way he describes all of these experiences--in words that are perceptive, clear, and beautiful.  What I disappointed me is the length of time (number of pages) spent on describing the depth of his partner's depression and its effects on their lives.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Tuesday, June 10, 2025--San Antonio

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus was recommended to me by a friend who said it was funny.  I read it because several books I have read this year, although well written, have not been funny and were rather tedious to read.  With this one, I kept having the feeling that I was reading a book that did not seem to be that good.  Built around a mystery and the concept of female liberation, there were obvious hints throughout to guess what was coming at the end.  Most of the characters were just going in circles involving frustration, depression, discrimination, etc., making the book much longer than it had to be.  But I did find it funny at times. The dog was my favorite character and provided the most laughs.  It's not a bad book, but it is a long way from being a good book, I think.  I generously decided on a rating of 3 stars out of 5 out of love of the dog!

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

Thursday, June 5, 2025--San Antonio

I wish I had never decided to read Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte.  It was longlisted for the National Book Award and named by the New York Times as a top book of the year, plus it was on my "hold" list for about 16 weeks before I got it from Libby which made me think it was really going to be good.  Once I did get it, it took me over a week to read the book that has only 272 pages!  Why?  I kept disliking the characters and thinking why should I be reading about these objectionable people.  Then, about 35% of the book rambled in minute detail about how a character was mad at life and spending hours a day on social media creating multiple identities just for the purpose of mischief and getting people riled.   Finally, the "idea" of it all is revealed toward the end.  It at least made things make sense and tied what I had read together.  But I it didn't make me happy that I had kept on reading.  I'll admit that the concept is an interesting one (although there is no real story as one expects when reading a novel), and that the writer is very intelligent and detailed in his writing.  But those do not overcome 1) the sense of the waste of my time it involved and 2) the fact that there was never a sense of an immediate need to see what would be coming on the next page.  For me, this book needs two ratings:  0 stars out of 5 for its worth for reading and 2 stars out of 5 overall due to the creativity involved in writing it. 

Blood Test by Charles Baxter

Wednesday, May 28, 2025--San Antonio

Blood Test by Charles Baxter is supposed to be a comedy.  I did chuckle a few times during the first quarter of the book.  But I had to push myself to continue reading from there and found nothing laughable about the rest of the book.  I know by having read the reviews that this book is supposed to be a critique of modern American society--a farce.  And it is obvious that it is not meant to be read as serious at all.  But for me, the premise, that a successful, intelligent and religious man follows through in taking a blood test which is marketed as being capable of providing results to forecast the individual's future, was too far beyond potential belief.  Scams in America today tend to SOUND believable even though they are planned to do nothing but take advantage of those falling for them.  That this was obviously a scam just led me to lose interest in continuing the novel at the pace I had been reading up to that point.  I had no interest in a character who was so gullible.  I spent at least 3-4 days longer to read this short novel than I should have, but I stayed with it because it has been so popular.  (I had to be on a wait-list for about 12 weeks before getting my copy from the ebook library.)  I'm now glad that I have finished it and can put it behind me.  The most I can rate this book is 3 1/2 stars out of 5. 

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

Wednesday, May 21, 2025--San Antonio

There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, and others.  It is a fascinating book.  I consider it to be essentially a philosophy book built around the story of the life of a Black man who grew up in a poor neighborhood of Colombus, OH, playing pickup basketball with his friends at the local poorly maintained park while following the history of both the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team and the city of Cleveland during many years of mostly disappointment and depression for both the team and the city.  If you read about the life of the author, it's obvious that this book is essentially his autobiography with greater intentions than just to tell his life story.  It is one of the most interesting books I have ever read and one of the better written ones, too.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicincio

Saturday, May 3, 2025--San Antonio

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicincio was longisted for the National Book Award this past year and was named a best book of the year by TIME, NPR, etc..  It's the story of a young woman who is sent to the US to live with her grandparents.  Her parents died in an accident when she was too young to have memories of her life with them, and she had been raised by an aunt and an uncle until she was flown to the US entering only with a tourist visa to see her grandparents which, eventually when she did not leave, an illegal immigrant living with two other undocumented, illegal immigrants.  The book is the story of her life in the US.  It describes the way she was taught to keep their secret from everyone.  It tells how she was intelligent and learned everything she knew from reading.  Somehow, however, she did not make progress in learning social skills and is quite unlikable.  She made it into Harvard, but she uses her knowledge of situations in the books she had read to try to reason and analyze what is happening as she interacts with others.  And often she just doesn't care to do so leading to disastrous effects.  I really liked the novel at the beginning, but I became frustrated with her bad decisions toward the end.  Throughout her life, she had managed to come through situations with miracle-like results, but that was all coming to an end during her last semester at Harvard.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Devil Is Fine by John Vercher

Wednesday, Apr. 30, 2025--San Antonio

Devil Is Fine by John Vercher was longlisted for two prizes and was named a best book of 2024 by several sites.  It is the story of a biracial (mulatto) professor under a lot of stress:  His job is on the line because his first book, a prize winner, has not been followed with further publications and the deadline for receiving tenure or losing his job is approaching.  His 17-year-old son has recently died without the two of them resolving issues that had been developing since the son became an adolescent.  He has just inherited a piece of land which is a former plantation from his grandfather on the "white" side of his ancestry.  He has been having hallucinations since arriving at the plantation to inspect it and to make a decision regarding what to do with it.  He is imagining conversations with his son.  And he seems to be taken over by the spirit of the former plantation owner as excavations at the site uncover aspects of the past.  It's a fascinating story although quite surreal at times.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

Sunday, Apr. 27, 2025--San Antonio

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is a publication that includes a short novel and 3 short stories.  The title comes from the novela.  The writing is good and thought-provoking.  The first short story was quite provocative in concept.  Research lab work to aid pig farmers to make higher profits by introducing a bacteria that fights the body's natural inclination of developing sexual characteristics until a choice is made (in the case of pigs of giving the body estrogen so that all of the piglets become females) is released outside the lab causing a spreading contagion among humans that results in each person having to choose to be either male or female.  The novela takes place in an illegal logging camp in the middle of winter.  The stress of working under extreme cold conditions (with snow), working 12-hour-day-after-day to finish the job before spring arrives and government inspectors head to the countryside to catch illegal logging camps, and boredom from the routine of it with no option as an outlet for their frustrations results in the proposal of having a future stag dance.  The leader of the camp proposes that it be held "Winnipeg-style" which means that the dance will be more interesting by asking men who are willing to do so wear an upside-down triangle of brown fabric over their crotch for two weeks before the dance to indicate that they are willing to play the role of being a female.  The "fun" of this concept is that if the other men want to enjoy having dance partners (and maybe more), they must woo the men wearing triangular pussies--with favors, gifts, etc., up to the time of the dance.  The protagonist in the story is called Babe Bunyan.  He is huge and strong and quite unattractive.  But inside, he has desires to be courted by men, to have close encounters with men, and possibly even to have sex with one of them.  There's far more happening in the novela--jealousy conditions, a contract for the illegally felled wood with the state's wealthiest family, concerns about not being paid until the end of the contract, broken trusts between people in te camp, etc.  I found all four stories to be thought-provoking with each covering a topics that is beyond the realm of my life experiences.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez

Monday, Apr. 21, 2025--San Antonio

Hombrecito by Sanitago Jose Sanchez was recognized as a best book of 2024 by both NPR and Kirkus.  But it is a bit of muddle as a novel as far as I am concerned.  The beginning is the story of a family in Colombia--a woman married to a civil engineer who is seldom home (due to his work, but also because he has a reputation for having affairs) and two sons, one the son of the current husband and the other the son of a previous husband.  This opening section continues to the point where the mother and two sons leave Colombia to live in South Florida because of a tragedy--leaving a middle class life in Colombia for a poor one in Florida.  The middle of the book becomes the the story of the struggle the family has living in poverty in the U.S., the relationship between the sons who have been close starting to change, and eventually the story of the younger son as he, after high school graduation, departs from South Florida.  The majority of the last part of the book veers into the story of the younger son having lost his way in life--making bad choices related to university studies, becoming involved in taking drugs and partying, exploring his sexuality (as a somewhat effeminate gay whose interest is in older men who abuse him), and bumbling through jobs that do not pay well and his life mostly as a failure.  Then a final chapter is told by the mother and involves a turn-around where she and the younger son return to Colombia for a week because her mother/his grandmother is near death.  Personally, I found much of the middle of the book uninteresting--the brothers' relationship disintegrating and the young boy, although intelligent, repeatedly making very bad decisions in life, and the older brother mostly distancing himself and his life from both the brother and the mother while the mother makes progress in overcoming the poverty and hardships that they have faced since coming to the U.S.  The trip at the end of the novel was interesting but seemed to be mostly disjointed from the rest of the book because of it switching to the mother telling much of the story in it.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Twenty Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds

Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2025--San Antonio

Twenty Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds was listed among the top books of 2024.  It's adolescent literature that can be enjoyed by anyone--a love story written from the perspective of a 17-year-old Black boy.  It's uniquely written, starting 24 seconds before he and his girlfriend of 2 years and he are about to have sex for the first time and going backwards by 24's (minutes, hours, weeks, months) sharing what has come before to build up to this moment.  Neon (named that because his grandfather was Deon and his father Leon and told by his girl friend that he's lucky they didn't choose Peon!) does not fit the stereotype for teenage Black boys.  He is kind, thoughtful, caring, sensitive, intelligent, very communicative, and hilarious at times.  He is from a middle class background with the family on his mother's side owning a metal shop making door knockers for several generations.  He and his group of friends are seniors in high school and are the committee for producing the school yearbook as an online publication for the first time instead of a physical book.  He watches films with his grandfather once a week, walks his grandmother to the cemetery once a week after his grandfather dies, takes his girl friend on weekly trips to see old films at the cinema, and assists at his father's bingo hall by handing out the prize money to each winner.  He is worried about not just the coming sexual experience, but about the coming end of the school year.  His girl friend is going away to college, and he is apprenticing at the family door knocker metal shop.  What will happen then?  It was easy to like the characters and the story which is a fast read making me laugh often.  I gave the book a rating of 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

 Saturday, Apr. 12, 2025--San Antonio

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is a slice-of-life novel.  It takes place over a rather short period of time in a very particular place with back-stories to provide insight into who is who and why they are the way they are.  The setting is in rural Maine on the border where the Penobscot Nation tribal lands begin. The central character is an unmarried, non-Native American man who was raised by his mother and his Native American stepfather on the tribal lands until he became an adult and had to leave.  His stepfather bought land and built him a small home just opposite the river that is the border.  His best friends when living on the tribal lands were a boy and a girl his age who were both natives.  In his past, he and the young woman who had been his friend for years lived together and she became pregnant.  Because tribal rules do not give rights to people who are not 100% native, the woman left him and married a native man to assure rights for her daughter.  The daughter is now a married adult and is not aware that he is her real father.  The boy who was his close friend no longer lives in the area; his father, who was the chief of the tribe, beat him regularly as a child for not being manly and he now lives in California and is married to a man.  The mother of the main character has suffered from depression all her life and has developed dementia.  She eventually moved into town and there have been years of little or no contact between them.  Because of his loneliness and his own problems, the main character has developed a close relationship with an alcoholic man he met at AA meetings.  It is not a sexual relationship, it is a co-dependence based on the need for someone in each of their lives considering the loneliness they are feeling in this rural area.  The reader learns of the hardships all of these people have faced, the limitations of their lives based on the circumstances, the guilt and secrets that each has, their need to have better or different lives than currently exists for them, etc.  It's an interesting story.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Wednesday, Apr. 9, 2025--San Antonio

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino is quite unique.   It was named a top book of 2024 by Time and others and is the story of an alien brought to life as a human female child birthed by a poor American woman in Philadelphia.  (The book tells how it occurred.)  The child is a bit of a misfit (as any alien would be), but that works well for her to fulfill her purpose here.  As a child, she is visited in the evenings by beings from her planet who explain her existence and her purpose.  Not until she is an adolescent is she "activated" for fulfilling that purpose which is to report on what life is like on Earth, since there are problems on her home planet that will cause everyone to die if they cannot find a solution such as a new place to live.  The book consists of her life story--living in poverty and what that entails, being a bit different from everyone else (definitely not a part of the in-crowd), being very intelligent and earning scholarships for the best Catholic middle school and high school in the city, missing out on a scholarship for college because another student who cheated got it, being close friends with a girl in her classes and her family through most of her life, making the decision to be bold and move to New York City to live where her best friend and one of brother both moved, etc.  But more important than that life story are her communications back to her home planet.  The author of the book has done a great job of imagining what it would be like for a stranger to earth observing life here.  Each communication is an explanation of how things are, but written in a very innocent, childlike way.  It's those communications that make the book so special and keep the reader interested.  There are sad times, happy times, frustrating times, etc., that assure the reader that she is really living life as an earthling while observing it.  I enjoyed taking the journey with her and gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

Wednesday, Apr. 2, 2025--San Antonio

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya was recommended as a top book of 2024 by several sources.  I read it, and it was an interesting concept for a novel, but it was quite confusing at times, since the book was describing 3 different periods of time--a 3-month period a father and daughter spent in Sicily as he wrote a novel and she was invited there to assist him, and two simultaneous events occurring 10 years later--the mother and daughter having lunch together and discussing their lives while the father (divorced from the wife since the daughter was a young child) watches a matinee of a play the daughter has written which seems to be a criticism of what happened that summer.  By the end of the book, I did not care for any of the characters.  They are all very self-centered.  The father has always had sloppy, inconsiderate habits which bother those around him and which he seems to think are okay ways for him to be.  The mother divorced him for those reasons and seems to have tried to punish him by limiting his time with the daughter while collecting as much child support as possible (since he is a very successful author).  The daughter is the worst of all of them, however.  She is a 30 year old who feels that she has been slighted constantly by everyone in her life.  She is always ready to tell anyone else (even strangers on the street) how they are offending her by what they are saying or how they are acting.  In my opinion, it's time for all of them to go their separate ways and to never have anything to do with each other ever again; otherwise, there will never be any peace in their lives.  But I expect, the same problems will arise with anyone else who becomes involved personally with any one of the three.  I was so glad to see the book come to an end.  I gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5 not because I didn't like the characters but because it was such a complicated construction of a novel that I found myself having to figure out too often what was happening and where and when. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2025--San Antonio

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid was published 7 years ago.  I decided to read it because I read a short blurb on a news website about anticipated upcoming films and series later this year.  I've always found the original books to be better than the films or series made of them.  Books just have so much more detail than can be included on film.  It's the story of a sexy Cuban refugee living in Hell's Kitchen in New York making her escape and rising to become a very wealthy Oscar-winning film star and co-producer who marries 7 different men and eventually lives a reclusive life.  It makes me think of Elizabeth Taylor (multiple husbands), Greta Garbo (reclusive), and Raquel Welch (sexy and a name hiding her Latin heritage) among others.  It's also the story of an actress strongly protecting her reputation at great personal cost.  The entire book takes place within a two-week period when she is meeting with an author she has chosen to write her official biography with legal agreements that it cannot be published until she dies.  She wants the REAL story of her life (versus the one the public knows from paparazzi publications) to be told.  The book has sold over 5 million copies since it was published, and it definitely kept me interested and picking it up to continue reading as often as I could.  I rated the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

In Tongues by Thomas Grattan

Sunday, Mar. 23, 2025--San Antonio

In Tongues by Thomas Grattan is a good story but has a central character I didn't like.  Gordon reminds me of too many young men (especially young gay men) who wander through life making bad decisions no matter what good opportunities come along.  One of his biggest problems is not having any sense of responsibility.  Money, when it comes, is to be blown irresponsibly.  Friends are persons to take advantage of when needed without feeling bad about it.  It's like he feels he deserves every opportunity that comes along while not needing to feel grateful or to avoid taking advantage of those who have provided it.  He fails over and over again in keeping friends, keeping jobs, in simply living life.  By the end of the novel, he seems to have finally figured some things out and made some good decisions, but his love life is still unsettled and may never become so.  I considered quitting reading the book during the first quarter of it, because I found no pleasure in reading about such a person.  But the story eventually becomes more interesting because of the persons around him--the lesbian friends he makes, the older gay art dealer and his fickle younger life partner who take him under his wing, his ultra-conservative religious father and his second wife, etc.  The book was named one of the top gay novels of 2024 and the author won a literary prize for it.  I can see why.  Sometimes, however, there are good novels that are just not enjoyable to read for a specific reason.  My final rating for the book is 4 stars out of 5 with the lost point being for the beginning when there no motivation was developed to make me want to continue reading about the life of this young man.

All Fours by Miranda July

Thursday, Mar. 29, 2025--San Antonio

All Fours by Miranda July was named a Top 10 book by Time and a finalist for the National Book Award.  I actually waited weeks with this book on hold before getting it on my Kindle through the Libby App (my local library paying for it, thank goodness, rather than me).   It's the story of an obnoxious woman making bad decisions.  Supposedly funny, I didn't laugh once during the 15% of it that I read.  I just couldn't stick with it any longer.  From the reviews, I can see that it is women who love the book, and apparently it's women frustrated with their lives.  There was just nothing about it that appealed to me.  It joins a small group of books with prominent award nominations that I swear must have been achieved by "sleeping" with the judges!!  I decided to quit the book and give it 1 star out of 5. 

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang

 Tuesday, Mar. 18, 2025--San Antonio

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang was named a best book of 2024 by TIME.  The plot is a great one--two people who were not friends in high school and are pushed further apart by a tragedy just months before graduation, go their separate ways for years with both becoming writers, and then find themselves on the same writing team for adapting the novel of one of the two into a screenplay for a mini-series.  I found the story and the characters to be exciting.  I thought, "I am reading such a good novel."  Then throughout the 3rd quarter of the novel I started noticing things:  Is this a romance novel?  There are pages of detailed descriptions of the steps of a sexual encounter.  And it repeats and repeats with every sexual encounter.  It was far more detail than was needed for a novel and became a distraction from the good story I was reading.  And there were repetitions of terms--"the tattoo of my heart" (meaning the beat), "gripped my heart" and other expressions written too many times compared to what is expected in a serious novel (versus other creative ways to say the same things when a feeling is repeated).  Fortunately, the book turned back into a really good novel during the final quarter.  By that time, however, I had realized that I could not rate it higher than 3 1/2 stars out of 5.  If only the author had stuck with the real story rather than wandering off to spend so much time describing multiple sexual encounters in almost the same words, I could have raised that rating!

Long Island by Colm Toibin

Friday, Mar. 14, 2025--San Antonio

Long Island by Colm Toibin was named a best book of 2024 by many top publications.  It is a follow-up to his novel Brooklyn.   Toibin is a good writer.  His style is easy to read and clear and precise.  In this book, the character Eilis has returned to Ireland for the first time in 20 years (from the setting of the first book) to visit her mother supposedly to celebrate the mother's 80th birthday, but really to get away from a problem that has popped up in Brooklyn where her life has been somewhat suffocating from living on a cul de sac that has four houses filled with Italian in-laws.  She is at a point where she must make some major decisions about her life that will affect others--her husband, her children, and her family and friends still living in the small Irish village where she grew up. The book is so well written, that each step of the way the reader can foresee problems that don't have good solutions and the book ends with the reader left in this quandary.  What decisions did every one make?  If this was decided, this would be a problem.  If another decision was made, there would be this a different problem.  All the characters have their faults, so there are reasons for the reader to want the story to go in different ways.  I really enjoyed the book and rated it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor

Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2025--San Antonio

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor is set on a small island 5 miles off the coast of Wales where fewer than 40 people live and half of the homes are abandoned due to the hard life on the island and the desire of young persons to leave for the mainland.  One young girl is a star pupil who knows not only Welsh, but also speaks and writes English.  The timing is the 1930's with rumors of war coming, but the news is always delayed by a couple of weeks or more before arriving on the island.  Two researchers from Oxford arrive on the island to study the people and their culture--their music, their stories, their life daily lives, etc.  They hire the young girl to be their assistant for interacting with the locals and for writing what is said and translating it into English for the book the researchers will publish.  The book gives a great picture of what the harsh life is like on the islands.  It also shows that the "researchers" are misinterpreting what they are seeing and hearing and will be presenting a story that is not really true to the life there but to how the researchers have romanticized it to themselves.  (Reading the book brought back memories of the criticisms that Margaret Mead and other anthropologists from that time period eventually received for their work in remote civilizations being misrepresentations.)  The researchers eventually disappoint not only the young girl but also the reader in an emotional ways.  But that was apparently a typical problem for anthropologists of that period in time.  It took a while to really get interested at the beginning of the book, but I soon found myself really enjoying the "real story" of life on the island.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada

Saturday, Mar. 8, 2025--San Antonio 

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada is, I believe, the first book that I have ever read within 24 hours.  But after about 7 books in a row that didn't excite me much (even though some were well written), it was such a joy to be reading a book that kept me wanting to stay with it page-after-page that I even changed my daily routine to keep going until the end.  It was identified as one of the top novels for young adults from last year (although it likely will be banned from many school libraries because of its subject matter).  It's a coming-of-age novel about the lives of various misfits in their senior year of high school--the tough guys who are considered delinquents, the school nerds, those becoming aware of sexuality issues, etc.  The central character is one of the tough guys in a group of three who call themselves The Triads.  He has been rebelling because of events in his earlier life.  His father was an alcoholic and an abuser until he and his mother finally decided to try to escape.   But a tragic event occurred and they have been afraid of being found by the father for 9 years.  They live a lower-class life in a small apartment above a business.  He works at a local pizza place owned by the father of one of his friends in the Triads to help his mother with the expenses.  He cuts classes, gets into trouble often, and is in danger of failing and having to repeat his senior year.   He is also discovering that he is apparently gay and is afraid to come out to his friends or his mother.  But he has seen and met a ballet dancer who is the best friend of the daughter of his mother's boyfriend's boss when the "family" (mother, son, mother's boyfriend, and boyfriend's daughter) make their annual trip to the local theater during the Christmas season to see a performance of The Nutcracker.  That sets the stage for the coming-of-age events within the lives of multiple people during the final semester of their senior year.  Bad behaviors are analyzed and changed,  enemies come to understand they have more in common than they realized, and adolescents begin to mature and to make amends for the past.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Liars by Sarah Manguso

Friday, Mar. 7, 2025--San Antonio

Liars by Sarah Manguso is a book that took me some time to become invested in it.  It begins with tales of how horrible a marriage is.  The central character is the wife who is being mentally abused by her husband--a man who does nothing to help around the house or with their child, who is a frustrated because of being unsuccessful both as an artist and as a failed (3 times) tech entrepreneur, who is envious of his wife's successful writing career, who constantly manipulates her to feel like she is a failure (in all possible ways), and who regularly implies to friends that she is crazy by emphasizing that she received psychological treatment years before they were married and exaggerating the story as if she had been confined to a mental hospital.  At the same time, the woman keeps downplaying/overlooking/excusing the severity of the abuse while it continues to happen regularly.  I wanted to yell at her.  By the last third of the book, I realized that I had needed to go through all the first 2/3 to understand the situation better and to observe the slow evolution that was occurring in their relationship. I didn't want to put the book down during that last third of it.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Poor Dear by Claire Oshetsky

Monday, Mar. 3, 2025--San Antonio

Poor Dear by Claire Oshetsky has lots of good reviews.  I read it because of one on NPR.  But it was slow reading for me, especially in the beginning.  I spent the whole time I was reading the book trying to figure out exactly what was happening.  Margaret seems to be autistic with indications of high intelligence.  She teaches herself to read by looking at the books as someone reads to her.  She creates her own form of script to write the stories that appear in her mind.   She has a vocabulary that is far above what is expected of a child her age.  But at age 4, a tragedy occurs.  Her best friend is a bit of a wild child--always seeking adventure in dangerous ways.  While playing a game in an unused shed, the friend suggests a game and hides in an old ice chest that locks automatically when she closes the lid.  Margaret can hear her friend panicking and trying to get out of the chest, but Margaret cannot figure out how to operate the latch to free her.  She spends her whole life feeling guilt from that day with the entire town believing that the death of her friend was her fault.  Margaret's conscience seems to take the form of an imaginary animal called Poor Dear which is almost always around needling her about what happened and what she needs to do to atone for the death of her friend.  As the story progresses, there are good and bad experiences in Margaret's life, but the mental illness she is developing keeps interfering.  It's an open-ended book where the reader must decide what Margaret eventually does.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa

Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025--San Antonio

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa was listed as a top book of 2024 by NPR and others.  It is a part of the "Remix" series where classic novels are reinterpreted by authors from marginalized backgrounds.  In this case, the original novel was Pride and Prejudice, and the character Elizabeth is written to be frustrated because "he" (who associates himself with the chosen name of Oliver) has always felt that he is a boy and hates being in dresses, does not ever want to get married, and, thanks to his older sister and two friends who know how he feels, is able to sneak out into society dressing and passing as a man.  (I assume the author is a transgender man and used his experience to reinterpret the character.)  Furthermore, the "awkward with women" character Darcy is reinterpreted as being attracted only to boys.  The story essentially follows the story of book that is being reinterpreted.  The aggressive mother is worried that her 5 daughters must find suitable men to marry because the family home/estate will be inherited by a distance male cousin as the closest male heir.  The father is still rather meek yet understanding (and in this version is coming to realize that his second daughter is more like a son than a daughter even though he does not completely understand the situation yet).  The character Wickham is still conniving to solve his money woes by marrying in a way that will solve those problems.  Etc.  It's an interesting concept.  To make the story work, the author has to overlook the general circumstances of the time for LGBTQ persons, but there is an addendum where he explains that there is historical evidence to support what he has written--evidence of the "male" member of a married couple being discovered as having female genitals upon death, for instance--and pointing out that there were no birth certificates at the time of the novel's setting so that a person could live as the opposite sex with no official records indicating that that he/she wasn't.  It is an easy read and is well written.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.  I probably will not read any others in this remix series, however.

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025--San Antonio

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is on the "best list" of multiple publications for 2025.  I found the first half of it to be fantastic.  It was well written, gripping, and seemed very authentic for the experiences and thoughts of a young minority scholarship student attending an elite school.  I was ready to recommend it to everybody.  But the 3rd quarter of the book became a bland telling of event after event with gaps of time between them.  Maybe this was on purpose because one learns that the protagonist wrote much of the novel, then his husband wrote the rest from journal entries.  The final quarter of the book was a bit better, but the excitement for reading it never returned to that I enjoyed with the first half.  If the whole book was like the first half, I would have given it 5 stars.  However, my overall opinion now is that it should be rated 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Woo Woo by Ella Baxter

Monday, Jan. 20, 2025--San Antonio

I did not find Woo Woo by Ella Baxter to be an enjoyable novel to read.  It took me 2 weeks to get through about 225 pages!  Some aspects of it were interesting to consider.  Some were very confusing.  The central character is a performance artist.  She creates life-size puppet characters using silicone, fur, bones, fabric, etc., which she wears for live performances, for taking photographs, etc.  She also specializes in nude performances which are presented live in person or online and from which photographs are made to sell in the gallery that represents her art.  She has followers who wait for her next broadcast and comment online as the performance is occurring.  She suffers greatly from anxiety as scheduled shows at galleries approach.  The book covers a few weeks before her biggest gallery opening so far.  The stress and worry of this approaching event is depicted.  She "sees and communicates" with a fellow artist who is deceased.  She procrastinates as the gallery owner asks her to write the blurb to be put into the program describing her works to be exhibited.  There is a stalker outside the house--standing in the garden, passing notes under the door, etc.  But is he real or imaginary?  She expects more attention from her unbelievably tolerant husband, a chef working long hours in his highly rated restaurant, than he can possibly provide.  She worries constantly that the show will not be a success.  She enters periods of excessively wild online performances creating havoc and messes.  She needs constant assurance from others that she is a good artist.  And when the owner of the gallery that represents her gives her the big show she needs and wants, she wants to make the decisions about how to present the show rather than leaving them to the owner.  I am sure there are artists like this woman.  How people in her life put up with her for very long, I don't understand.  I would be running away from any kind of relationship with her.  She is too needy, too self-centered, too anxious, etc.  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5 because I am sure it is a fairly well written description of what some artists are like.

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr.

Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025--San Antonio

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr., is a collection of short stories.  The stories are related to the experiences of Central American immigrants who came to the United States.  Some are science fiction set in the future (involving Central American immigrants).  Some have a gay male Central American immigrant as the protagonist.  The final story is written in a style of giving the reader options of what he wants to happen from one stage of the story to the next and provides the opportunity for going back and making different decisions at different points.  (This choice technique worked particularly well when reading on a Kindle.)  The stories were interesting, but I did not find myself dwelling on them after they were read.  In fact, as I progressed through the book, I had difficulty remembering stories I had already finished.  I can recommend the book for being interesting, but not for being great.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.