The Library of Legends

 Janie Chang's The Library of Legends (#930) was an interesting blend of historical fiction and fantasy inspired by the author's own father's student experiences in pre World War II China.  As the students and professors evacuate Chinese universities before the Japanese arrive, taking with them books and scrolls important to preserving Chinese culture, the celestial gods and spirits guarding the woods, trees, rivers and cities are warned to leave China as well for their heavenly home before the Palace Gates close forever.

Binding the two stories together is the (fictitious) Legend about the Willow Star and the Prince.  Willow Star chooses to live her immortal life watching over the Prince in his many incarnations, while never being able to recapture their love.  Willow in this life is known as Sparrow Chen, servant to the wealthy Liu family.  She accompanies Shaoming (the Prince) to college in Nanking, but few mortals are aware that she is any more than a servant.  Hu Lian is a second year scholarship student at Nanking with secrets of her own.  Both leave Nanking behind along with a group of more than one hundred students, professors and laborers to make the thousand mile trek to safety in Chengtu.  With them they take the Library of Legends, charged with its safe concealment during the war.  Spies and murder pursue them as the Nationalists and Communists clash with each other and the Japanese.

The course of true love never does run smoothly; it's the obstacles put in the couple's way that make the story interesting.  You might even learn a few things along the way.

Anxious People

 Anxious People (#929) might be my favorite Fredrik Backman book so far. (See my posts of 12/9/16, 1/4/17 & 12/24/18.)  It's a wonder to me how he manages to combine humor with such a delicate and poignant attention to the human condition, and leave us wanting more.

The anxious people of the book's title are eight hostages of a bank robber who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so you might initially think the novel is going to be a thriller, but as the story gradually unfolds, it's much more about relationships and what drives people to act the way they do.  Just one bad decision can send a life careening off the rails...

Most of all, I think it's about love, or the lack of it.  It's what motivates the characters in the story.  It's easy to see ourselves reflected in many of the actors here; the bank robber who bungles the job, the father and son police officers assigned to the hostage situation, the old woman waiting for her husband to finish parking the car and come up to the apartment for sale, the couple expecting a baby, the potential apartment flippers and the woman who visits apartments so she can look down on the middle-class folk who can't afford a more exclusive address.  There's something of them in all of us, for better or for worse.

How Mr. Backman weaves the characters' lives together to create such a satisfying whole is magical.  I was sorry to reach the last page of this story, I enjoyed it so much.  Highly recommended.

Sex and Vanity

 Just as I expected, Kevin Kwan's latest novel Sex and Vanity (#928) was the perfect escape for a summer that just won't quit.  And just like his Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, it came complete with snarky footnotes.  New this time were the alma mater lists for each character, from pre-school through grad school.  Ouch! in some cases.

Lucie Churchill is at the center of this novel which begins at an over-the-top weeklong wedding on the Isle of Capri.  Her good friend and former baby-sitter Isabel is marrying into Italian nobility.  Since both families are mega-rich, all the stops are pulled out.   With Lucie a tender nineteen, her mother has insisted her older cousin Charlotte accompany Lucie as a chaperone.  When Adonis-like George Zao and his flamboyant (and ultra-rich!) mother Rosemary enter the picture, things get really interesting.  

Fast forward five years, and when Lucie and George next meet at the Hamptons, she's engaged and he's working as an architect in New York City.  Lucie can't put George out of her mind, but what can she do?  Everything she tries just seems to make matters worse...

Oh, the places, the couture, the fabulous food!  That's what makes reading Kwan's books so much fun.  Personally, I thought Lucie was kind of a wimp who in many ways deserved some of the things that happened to her because she couldn't or wouldn't stand up for herself.  George was too perfect to be true, but don't we all want the total package? - the looks, the smarts, the money...

The descriptions of Capri brought me right back there.  I'm sure the descriptions of NYC and Long Island were spot on, too, but I had to laugh when I read that Lucie's super WASPy Churchill grandmother preferred to spend most of her time in her beach front mansion in Hobe Sound, Florida, in preference to her mansion-sized apartment in NYC, the estate in the Hamptons or the house in Paris.  Not that there aren't plenty of super rich and pretentious people living in Hobe Sound (there are!) but with the exception of a few very modest-sized homes on the ocean between the public Hobe Sound beach and the State Park which occupies the rest of Hobe Sound located on the barrier island, there isn't a mansion in sight.  Now, if Mr. Kwan had just stuck his pin in the map south of Hobe Sound Beach in Jupiter Island, that's the place where the ruling society doyennes will blackball the "wrong kind" by gifting a black cashmere sweater to the new neighbor...  Yep, the rich really are different.  Oh, if only we had that kind of money!

In Five Years

 In Five Years (#927), Rebecca Serle's latest novel, did not take me where I thought it would.  Dannie Kohan, an ambitious lawyer, has had an amazing day; she knows she's aced the interview for her dream job with a high-powered firm of corporate attorneys and her boyfriend of two years has just proposed at the Rainbow Room.  Back at their apartment, Dannie falls asleep.  When she wakes, she's in a different apartment with a different man and a different engagement ring on her hand.  As the news plays on the TV, she realizes that it's five years in the future, and it's not how she planned it!

When she reawakens, everything is back to normal.  But what happened?  Was it just a dream?  Ever practical, Dannie tries to put the experience in the back of her mind and carry on with her carefully-crafted life plan.  Until the day she meets the man in her vision four and a half years later...  Nothing can ever really prepare you for the future.

This didn't turn out to be a conventional romance, although that would have been an easy way to go with this story.  Instead, the author chooses to explore the strength of a life-long friendship and the bonds that connect us to a few special people in our lives, if we're lucky enough to have them.  

It's a fast read, but a satisfying one.  Make sure your box of tissues is nearby!

The Disappearing Spoon

 The Disappearing Spoon - and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (#926)(What a mouthful of a title!) is another book which has been languishing on my "To Read" List for far too long.  Sam Kean is a science writer who was well reviewed when this book originally appeared.  Since my days in chemistry class are only a distant memory, I have to admit I nearly gave up on this book after struggling through the first couple of chapters,  The author may think he was laying out the concepts of the periodic table in a simple, straightforward manner, but honestly, I had a much easier time digesting the concepts in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (See my post of  8/18/2016.).  I expected more of an anecdotal approach to the subject from the title, and in the latter chapters, I found that to be true.  Being a long-time fan of The Big Bang Theory on TV, at least I recognized some of Kean's references to famous scientists and even a few key equations!  (Thank you, Drs. Hoffsteder and Cooper!)

I'm not sorry I read this book, but I really think it's aimed at the science geeks among us, not the average reader.

Dorchester Terrace

 I finally have time to go way back on my list of "Want to Read" books from the library, and Anne Perry's Dorchester Terrace (#925) was the oldest book on the list and an excellent place to start.  It's from her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery series, so I knew I was in for a good read.

It's now 1896 and Thomas has been promoted from his work on the London Police Force to Head of Special Branch, replacing Victor Narraway, forced to resign after ruffling the feathers of the Prince of Wales in a previous operation.  Thomas is still new to the job, and uncomfortable still with some of the social obligations which are part of the post.  There is where Charlotte can help ease his way, even though he cannot discuss his work on behalf of the British Government with her.  When his aide Stoker comes to him with rumors of something unusual happening in Dover, he and Thomas follow up and discover that something troubling is, indeed, afoot.  When Thomas brings his concerns to the Foreign Office, Lord Tregarron refuses at first to see him.  But when it seems that a visit to Britain by a minor Austrian Duke will result in an assassination attempt, Pitt is forced to take his own measures to ensure the Duke's safety at all costs.  

In the meantime, Charlotte's aunt, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, has visited an old friend and revolutionary, Serafina Montserrat, who is dying.  She tells Lady Vespasia that she knows, and has safeguarded many important political and personal secrets over the years.  She is now afraid that her deepening dementia will cause her to inadvertently reveal secrets which can still cause great harm.  Could it be possible that Serafina's fears are real, and that someone is planning to use those secrets?

An interesting read with a background of late Austro-Hungarian Empire politics and betrayals.

The Grove of the Caesars

 Flavia Albia solves not one, but two mysteries in The Grove of the Caesars (#924), the latest outing of Lindsey Davis's consistently entertaining mystery series set in the Rome of Domitian, not an exactly comfortable period of time for the average Roman.

Although Flavia's husband is away on family business, he has casually warned her not to bother to go out to the Grove of the Caesars, a public park, to supervise his work gang dismantling an old grotto site.  That, of course, guarantees that Flavia will be there as soon as she can manage it.  When she does arrive, the work crew has just unearthed a cache of buried scrolls.  Can they be valuable?  It's certainly worth tracking down...

In the nearby Gardens, a huge birthday party is interrupted when the wife of the birthday boy goes missing, only to turn up raped and murdered in the Grove.  As Flavia investigates the disappearance of two dancing boys, a very recent gift from the Emperor, she begins to suspect that they may have been witnesses to the murder.  And, as it turns out, it's not the first by a long shot.

Flavia Albia carries on the amusing legacy of her adoptive parents, Marco Didius Falco and Helena Justina in this spinoff series.  If you haven't been lucky enough to discover these wonderful series yet for yourself, start with the original Marco Didius Falco series to find out just how Flavia Albia became part of this auctioneer/investigator family.