Peachy Reads

A fire nearly destroyed the Central Library in Los Angeles in 1986 in an epic conflagration of mysterious origins that nearly consumed its collection and the historic edifice in which it was housed.   While the fire and the subsequent investigation into its cause form the backbone of this nonfiction work, Susan Orlean ( The Orchid Thief ) fills alternating chapters with history of the library’s founding and development, glimpses into the lives of its sometimes quirky head librarians, and the ultimate renovation of the historic building.   Also included are sections which show the mission of the library today—its service to hard-to-reach populations, the homeless, new citizens, teens, early literacy, special collections, and reference work in the era of Google.   I like the way this piece of nonfiction reads like a novel, with interesting asides and characters.   Libraries are a touchstone for many of us, and this book may provide particular interest and enjoymen...

This was one of those books that was in such high demand at the library that my curiosity finally got the better of me and I had to see what the excitement was all about.   For someone who loves historical fiction, this is a perfect fit.    A member of the Russian aristocracy, Count Alexander Rostov, is sentenced to permanent house arrest in the luxurious Hotel Metropole off Red Square.   As the days unwind, and days become months, months become years, and finally decades, we experience an abbreviated history of modern Russia, and are witnesses to Rostov’s life, a surprisingly rich life that includes love, loss, friendship, and family. Reading this novel reminded me somewhat of how I fell down the rabbit hole of All the Light We Cannot See —the history, the characters, the settings.   It’s another one of those books that the reader will remember long after it's been put down after the final page has been turned. Kenneth Branagh is to play the role ...

Just on the edge of historic Bath, England, when they’re knocking down a row of terrace houses to clear space for a modern grocery store, a strange discovery is made.   When a hole is opened up in the   garret space—a skeleton is revealed,   sitting upright in a chair, dressed in the tatters of authentic 18 th century clothing with a men’s period wig sitting upon his skull.   Peter Diamond is put on the case, but what appears to be an 18 th century murder might be a crime that was perpetrated quite a bit more recently.   It is quite a tangled web that connects all the strands of this whodunnit, and by the end, the suspenseful ending is probably nothing the reader would have been able to predict. I particularly enjoyed this mystery since it referenced a lot of the historic landmarks of this wonderful city that I had a chance to visit last summer.

Not since Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle has a memoir of a hard-scrabble childhood taken the literary world so by storm.  Tara is "home-schooled" by her fundamentalist Mormon parents in the hinterlands of Idaho.  Never entering a formal educational setting until she is 17, it becomes the turning point in her life.  But her childhood was a education in its own right, and this memoir lays it bare-- the end-of-days cult of her father, the rejection not only of public schooling but also the medical profession, the isolation from relatives, the cruel inter-sibling abuse she suffers.  Nevertheless, it's a beautifully written story.

French-Moroccan author Leila Slimani has crafted a plot that is every working couple’s worst nightmare—a nanny who walks into the life of their family and seems to make everything perfect… until it all goes so utterly wrong.   The novel is not for the faint-hearted, but it is skillfully written and a suspenseful, horrifying tale that the reader will not soon forget. The Perfect Nanny  has become something of an international publishing sensation and won the Prix Goncourt,a big literary prize in France which is sort of the equivalent of the National Book Award.   

Juliet is a young woman in war time London.   She is recruited by the secret service, at first to transcribe recorded conversations of Nazi sympathizers, but then bit by bit she becomes more involved in the game of counterespionage, which eventually escalates with an unplanned murder.    Atkinson bookends the story with some timeshifts, which seems to be her signature.   I liked the story well enough, but the characters were a bit one-dimensional, in my opinion.   Well written and plotted, but maybe not her best.

I never saw the movie, but I saw the trailer enough times that it piqued my curiosity.   I’ve given up on edge-of-your-seat movies for many years now, but intense books I can still handle.   So when this title was available for download from my library’s ebook service, I was ready to read it.   Apparently the movie took many liberties with the book, seems like really only the concept survived the translation.   Anyway, here’s the gist of the novel—an exploratory team of several women researchers goes into the mysterious Area X where strange goings-on hint that nature is becoming monstrous, and humans are unwelcome intruders.   There is some pretty weird stuff going on, and when the biologist inhales some suspect spores, she begins to leave the human world behind.  Part of a trilogy.