The Nature of Things

What a ride! What a read! I think C.J. Box has got the hang of this Western thriller thing. This is the eighth entry in his Joe Pickett series and they've gotten better and better. This is easily the best one yet, in my opinion. The events in this book take place a bit less than a year since the last book, Free Fire , which was set in Yellowstone National Park. We find that Joe, who was fired from his position as game warden in Saddlestring, Wyoming, is still on board as a special agent for the governor, which means that he's at the governor's beck and call to handle whatever assignments he decides to hand out and be the governor's eyes and ears on the ground. For the first time in their lives, Joe and his wife Marybeth have bought a house. They are no longer living in government housing and are enjoying(?) the status of homeowner with all its responsibilities and the headaches of living up to their neighbors' expectations of yard and home care. Their older daughter...

I'm slowly overtaking Charles Todd's series featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge. This is the eighteenth in the series with one more to go, but I believe number 20 will be coming out this year. More reading to do. After spending all this time with Rutledge through the past few years, I've come to the conclusion that he is a very nice man but maybe not a very good detective. He often seems more intent on not rocking the boat than with getting to the bottom of things, particularly when he is dealing with upper class women, as he often seems to do in these cases.  In this case, it is four young and beautiful upper class women in Cornwall who have been accused on the word of one man of attempted murder. When the victim later dies from his injuries, it becomes murder. I found the whole scenario of the so-called attempted murder and the witness's statement rather implausible. It was just one of my problems with the plot. These four women decide on a sunny afternoon to take a rowb...

It begins with a suicide. Jim, a young Irish Catholic immigrant in Brooklyn, recently fired from his job as a subway motorman for being chronically late or absent, decides that he'll show his former bosses and his wife that he is the one who is in charge of his life.  The way he will show them is to end that life. And so he opens the gas taps in their apartment while his wife is out and he lies down to die. Yes, that'll show them!  His pregnant wife returns home to find a burned apartment - someone struck a match - and a dead husband. And now no means of support.  Enter the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. The nuns provide medical care for the sick of the neighborhood who cannot afford doctors. They take charge of the widow and her unborn child. They find employment for her at their convent and they provide emotional and financial support for the family in the difficult months and years ahead. The Ninth Hour is the story of that family and these nuns. The widow,...

When my kids were little, like most children, there was nothing they loved better than being read to. What is it about a parent sharing a book with a child that is such a powerful and, I would argue, a life-changing experience, both for the child and the parent? Some of the favorites of my daughters and myself were poems by Shel Silverstein. Silverstein had the knack for unerringly expressing the feelings of what it was like to be a child. Especially what it was like to be a child who really, really didn't want to go to school that day! Sick by Shel Silverstein, 1930 - 1999 “I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. “I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I’m going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox And there’s one more—that’s seventeen, And don’t you think my face looks green? My leg is cut—my eyes are blue— It might be instamatic flu. I cough ...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Blue-winged Teal pair; male on left, female right.  *~*~*~* Did you know that 2018 is the "Year of the Bird"? Several conservation organizations, including Audubon and National Geographic, have joined together to jointly proclaim this as the Year of the Bird to commemorate the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the most powerful and important bird-protection law ever passed and a main reason why many more North American birds have not gone extinct in the past hundred years. Unfortunately, even the best laws depend on humans to enforce them and, as I reported here last week, the humans currently in charge of administering the MBTA will not be enforcing some of the regulations that protect birds.  *~*~*~* And in other news of the rape of the environment currently occurring before our eyes,  the current administration in Washington unveiled a controversial proposal Thursday to permit drilling in most U...

I finished this book a couple of days ago but just couldn't immediately think what to say about it in a review. I wasn't even sure how I felt about it. It really was unlike anything I had ever read before.  After giving it much thought - and there truly is a lot to think about here - I came to the conclusion that the book is brilliant. The more I thought about it the more I liked it. In that, I found myself in agreement with the Man Booker Prize committee which shortlisted the book for 2017. Autumn is the first in a planned series of four books named after the seasons, but you would be wrong to think of the books as related to Earth's seasons. Instead, it would seem that they will be more about the seasons of our lives, what time is and how we experience it. This book explores pop culture and its influence on our lives and how the present is informed by the past. I'm once again reminded of William Faulkner's quote from Requiem for a Nun : "The past is never de...

How do you decide what books to read? I read reviews by reviewers whom I respect. I take recommendations from family and friends who know what I like to read. I look at the best sellers lists. I look at the magazine Bookmarks , which compiles reviews from various places and assigns a rating to books. And then I choose from all those sources the books that appeal to me and that I think I might enjoy reading. It's a system that works well for me. I rarely pick up a book to read that turns out to be a total stinker. And then there are some favorite authors that I will read regardless of what the reviews say or whether anyone recommends them. Louise Erdrich falls in that category. Her latest book, Future Home of the Living God , got very mixed reviews and, for the most part, they were not kind. Bookmarks' assessment, after compiling the reviews, was "Not recommended, even for Erdrich fans." But I was undeterred. I thought the book had an interesting concept. It seems that...