Riviera Gold by Laurie R. King

Riviera Gold by Laurie R. King

Riviera Gold is the 16th in the Mary Russell series of mystery novels that are based around the growing relationship between the young Mary Russell and a much older Sherlock Holmes after he moves from London to a rural Sussex cottage to take up beekeeping. In this installment set in the summer of 1925, Russell takes advantage of Holmes visit to Romania to go to Monte Carlo looking for Mrs. Hudson. Hudson, who left her employment as Holmes housekeeper and did not leave a forwarding address, has gone to live in Monte Carlo to be close to her old friend Lily Langtree and to live in her favorite city. In this novel we learn a lot about Hudson's backstory before she met Holmes, including a mysterious inheritance from her father that draws Hudson and Russell into contact with Monte Carlo's underworld.
I am very fond of Laurie King's writing style and this book is a worthy addition to this long running series.

No-No Boy

No-No Boy by John Okada

No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro, a Japanese-American young man from Seattle, after he is let out of prison at the end of World War II. Before the war started he was in college studying to be an engineer, but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he was sent to a series of Japanese internment camps for two years. At that point, he and many other young male Japanese-Americans were asked two questions by the US government: would they swear allegiance to the United States, and would they serve in the US armed forces. Those, like Ichiro, who answered no to both questions were sent to jail for an additional two years and became known as No-No Boys.
This book portrays what it was like for these resisters when they returned home and faced discrimination for their choice. He is surrounded by a Japanese community that is trying to fit back into American life and does not want to dwell on the unjust treatment they received during the war. And yet his No-No status does not allow him to put the past behind him. He needs to come to terms with it. Which is what he does in this book.
Originally published in 1957 No-No Boy was ignored by a country that did not want to come to terms with the injustice of the internment and its effect on the Japanese-American community. Only later in the 1970s did people start to take notice, leading to its republication in 1976. It has been in print ever since and is a seminal work on the Japanese-American internment and its effects on the people of Japanese heritage living on the West Coast. I bought my copy of this book during a visit to Seattle's Wing Luke Museum, which is dedicated to preserving Asian-American art and history.

Citizen 13660

Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo

After the United States entered World War II all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were forcibly relocated to internment camps. Miné Okubo was one of over one hundred thousand people swept up from their homes. She and her brother were first sent to to the Tanforan relocation center, a former racetrack, in San Bruno, California. There they shared a horse stall that smelled of manure and given sacks to fill with hay for their beds. Eventually she was tranferred to the Topaz internment camp in the Sevier Desert of central Utah; it was a dry, windy environment with harsh winters. During the war over 11,000 people were sent there.
A professional artist, she made over 2,000 drawings in charcoal, watercolor, pen, and ink, depicting her everyday experiences in these camps.
In 1946, after the war ended, she published Citizen 13660 (her government assigned number while in the camps) which contains 206 drawings from her internment, each narrated with a short text describing what is depicted in the picture.It covers her life from the years before the war to her final day at the Topaz internment camp, showing the day-to-day lives of her fellow internees of Japanese descent as she lived it. It was the first published account of the experience from an internee and won the American Book Award in 1984. This edition includes a Preface she wrote in 1983.

Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist

Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist by Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the three most prominent suffragists of the 19th Century, along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Early leaders of the movement to get equal rights for women, these three started the seminal work on the movement History of Woman Suffrage. Too Radical for her time, her research on the history of female oppression fueled the Second Wave Feminist Movement. Yet today Matilda Joslyn Gage is the least known of the three. Angelica Shirley Carpenter's biography does a lot to bring Gage's accomplishments to a modern audience. Of the three, Gage was the most radical, tracing women's oppresion to a coordinated effort of organized religion and civil governments. She was also the most scholarly, looking into the hostory of women's oppression. Her writings on this appeared in the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage, and in much greater detail in her later work Woman, Church and State
This book relies a lot on papers preserved by Gage's children who settled in the Dakota Territory in the 1880s. This may explain why the book was published by the South Dakota Historical Society. The title is based on Gage's assertion that, lacking the basic right to vote, women were treated similar to criminals by society.

The Kitchen Madonna

The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden

The Kitchen Madonna is a 1960s children's book about Marta, a middle aged female Ukrainian refugee, who has taken a job as a nanny/housekeeper for a London married cople who are professional architects. They have two children, Gregory (9) and Janet (7), and have had a series of one-year contract foreign nannies that have left Gregory introverted and shy. When Marta arrives seeking a home rather than an address in London, she becomes the secure center that Gregory has been missing. However, when Gregory finds out that Marta is not happy because their new modern home doesn't have a "good place" in the kitchen, a small shrine with an icon, candle, and flower vase, he sets out to find her a Ukrainian icon in busy, modern London. See how it all turns out in The Kitchen Madonna.
Given the current war in Ukraine and the vast number of Ukrainian refugees, this book has a special value today for understanding the good hearted nature of the Ukrainian people and their simple faith and values.

Book Uncle and Me

Book Uncle and Me by Uma Krishnaswami

Book Uncle and Me is a childrens book about a street corner librarian in India and a young girl who visits him every day to get e new book to read. When Book Uncle gets into trouble she rallies to his defense.
This is a great book for librarians to share with young readers. It shows young people how they are never powerless or too young to speak up against injustice. It also shows how important free access to books is to a community
It has great illustrations by Julianna Swaney.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I have long been a fan of movie versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, enjoying watching one or more versions every holiday season. This year I saw the Disney version which claimed to be the most true to the text movie adaptation made. That got me wondering what gets left out of Dickens' original work when Hollywood decides to put their ow spin on it. So this year I downloaded the text onto my iPhone and read the story as he told it in 1843. I am glad I did. I will keep watching new movie adaptations in years to come, but now I will know I am rooted in the original text.

I did find one exchange that I have never seen in any Hollywood retelling. I found this anti-church exchange between Scrooge and Christmas Present while they watched the poor people of the town bringing their holiday dinners to be cooked in the bakers' ovens, a routine activity in the 19th century for those too poor to have their own ovens.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge, “wouldn’t you?”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day,” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”

“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Scrooge promised that he would …

Man-Size in Marble

Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit

Man-Size in Marble is a short story by Edith Nesbit. It was first published in the December 1887 issue of the Home Chimes magazine. The story was later collected in Nesbit's 1893 anthology Grim Tales. This edition was published by Books of Wonder in 1997 in their Classic Frights series of short booklets with illustrations by Jeff White.
In it, a young newlywed couple seeking inexpensive lodging rent a small cottage that, unknown to them, comes with a mysterious curse. The husband hires a local housekeeper who tells him the legend of two man-size in marble prone statues of knights in a lonely country church nearby. She says on All-Hallows Eve at 11 pm the statues rise up and walk to their old home, which is the ruins on which their cottage was built. He dismisses the story as a local legend with no truth and decides to not worry his wife.
While a simple tale, it is well written in Nesbit's simple style that she developed as a children's author.
The text of the story is available in Wikisource at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grim_Tales/Man-size_in_Marble

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula by Koren Shadmi A well done biography of Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian born actor who played Dracula in Hollywood movies. Starting with his play acting with other children in Hungary, this book covers the rise and fall of one of Hollywood's most iconic actors. While showing his faults as well as his triumphs, the author always provides a sympathetic look on Lugosi's life.

William and the Lost Spirit

William and the Lost Spirit by Gwen de Bonneval & Matthieu Bonhomme

This English translation of a French graphic novel is a version of the hero quest adventure. The local lord, William's father, has died and his sister has disappeared when whe went searching for her father who she insisted was not dead. Also his mother has married the man he thinks killed his father. So he sneaks past his step-father's guards and goes on a quest to find his sister and his father's spirit. Along the way three companions join him: a goat, A mysterious kight, and a troubador. Together they travel from a magical version of Medieval France into stange lands with unusual creatures and people. Beautifully illustrated, this is a delightful story that I found enjoyable to read.

Fine: A Comic About Gender

Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing

Author Rhea Ewing interviewed over 50 people about the topic of Gender, then organized their statements into 15 subject chapters and illustrated them into graphic novel format to make an outstanding book that explores this complex and often misunderstood topic. The approach can be daunting as people talk about this most intimate side of themselves and you see them through the eyes of the author's expressive cartoons. At first, I had to take this book in a few pages at a timebecause the content is so raw and emotional. As I read on I began to see the broader picture and could read through to the end.
If you want to know more about Gender beyond the simple binary male/female, this is a great place to start. No philosophy or theory, just the direct words of over 50 people who are living with the question in their own lives organized into meaningful short statements under broad subject categories like adolescence, hormones, changing pronouns, bathrooms, feelings about your body, and other topics.
This book is powerful and comes with a lists of Content Warnings, places to get more information, and further readings.

The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr takes on the challenge of writing a further adventure of the famous 19th century detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson. He follows a traditional format with the story starting in London at the Baker Street home of Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson visiting and Mrs. Hudson in attendance. Here Holmes presents Watson with a telegram from his brother Mycroft Holmes asking him to come to Scotland to work on a case.
It seems Holmes is being asked to investigate a real life ghost story that is said to haunt the HolyRoodHouse castle of Mary Queen of Scots. It seems that Mary's husband, suspecting her of infidelity with her Italian secretary, had the man pulled from her rooms while they dined and repeatedly stabbed by a group of assassins. His ghost is said to haunt the castle down to the present day.
In the story, Queen Victoria uses the castle as her official residence in Edinburgh, and has commissioned an architect to restore the Queen Mary's tower. However, the architect and his assistant are murdered in the same manner as the Italian secretary. The local people think the ghost is taking revenge on his murderers, but Mycroft, suspecting political intrigue and worried for the safety of the queen, calls on Holmes to investigate.
I enjoyed reading the book although I didn't feel that the author was able to capture the style of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the characters. An important detail for a book that adheres closely to the original author's format. He does write of the 19th century well and the plot is sufficiently interesting for a murder mystery. So, while I enjoyed the book, I do not think it one of the better additions to the works about the famous detective.

Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie

Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie by Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau, & Alexandre Franc

This is a full color graphic novel biography of the great mystery writer Agatha Christie with references to the books she wrote as their writing ccured during her life. However only some of her most significant titles are mentioned. An interesting feature of this book is that she has a long imaginary relationship with her character Hercule Poirot, with briefer appearances of Miss Marple and Tommy and Tuppence, talking to them as if they are there with her. The authors tell of Christie's trips on the Orient Express, and her journey up the Nile River which became research for two of her most famous books. The book ends with a three page timeline of her life and a three page bibliography of her published works.

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth by Ken Krimstein

This book tells the life story of Hannah Arendt, philosopher, political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor, in graphic novel format. Krimstein brings Arendt's story to life with his illustrations and dialog. I highly recommend it as an easy introduction to one of the major intellectuals of thee 20th Century.

Flung Out of Space

Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer

This is a biographical graphic novel of the life of Patricia Highsmith, the lesbian author of the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, republished 38 years later in 1990 as Carol under her own name, and later adapted into the 2015 film of the same name. In telling Highsmith's story, the authors illustrate the difficulties faced by lesbians in the 1950s, when being a lesbian was an illness, a sin, and against the law.

The Third Person

The Third Person by Emma Grove

In this graphic novel Emma Grove tells the story of her experience with a transgender therapist whom she sought out to get approval for hormone replacement therapy, only to be diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. She and the therapist discover she has three personalities: Edwin, Emma and Katina. She finds she has to deal with her multiple personalities and the childhood trauma that caused them to exist before she can succesfully continue with her transition.

The Solstice Gift: Behrouz and Lucky on the Longest Night by Avery Cassell

The Solstice Gift: Behrouz and Lucky on the Longest Night by Avery Cassell

Behrouz and Lucky are a lesbian couple living together in Northhampton, a college town in Western Massachusetts. One year they decide that their Solstice gift to each other will be a threesome on Solstice night, the longest night of the year, with one of the local residents. Planning the evening and deciding on who they will invite, they develop a ritual that they continue to refine and repeat over the coming years.
The Solstice Gift won the the 2020 Pauline Reage Novel Award from the National Leather Association (NLA).

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn

Boccaccio claims to have written this book for women, and seven of the ten characters are young 14th century women who are accompanied by three young men. This is a novel of these ten youths who flee their city which is overrun with the Black Plague, and who take refuge in a country estate for two weeks. To pass the time, each of the ten tells a story on ten consecutive days (allowing weekends off for cleaning and rest). The result is this book of 100 stories set within the framework of their excursion. The stories show how much customs have changed and also how so many things remain the same.
Long recognized as a classic of Western Literature, The Decameron has suffered by difficult to read translations until now. Wayne Rebhorn has provided a translation into modern English that does not diminish the story or modernize it, while providing words that beg to be read aloud, as is fitting for stories that are told out loud in the book.
If you have ever wanted to read The Decameron now is the time to do it and this is the version to read.

Ann Tenna

Ann Tenna by Marisa Acocella Marchetto

When gossip columnist Ann Tenna has a near death experience and is confronted by her higher self she faces aa challenge to change her life for the better. Hopefully, the message to love and forgive yourself and others will reach this book's readers without the need for such drastic measures.

Torpedo Volume One

Torpedo Volume One by Sanchez Abuli & Jordi Bernet

Torpedo is a Spanish graphic novel series written by Enrique Sánchez Abulí and drawn by Jordi Bernet. Torpedo is the nickname for hitman Luca Torelli in Depression Era New York City. This is the first of five volumes published in English between 2009 and 2014. This volume includes the first two entries in the series illustrated by Alex Toth. This is great comic noir and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.