Sunday Salon 3-26-23

Dedicated to Clare

Tomorrow, family and friends will gather to mark the passing of my mother-in-law at the age of 86 after a long period of declining health. It’s not a surprise that although she had been ready – had prepared herself and tried to prepare others, making arrangements in advance, etc. – in the end, no one else was.

Always one to deflect attention from herself, it seemed she wanted to slip away quietly, without ado or drama, asking for the bare minimum of funeral services. I think she would be happy that we will remember her with a Mass at her local church followed by a gathering in her home of family and family friends to share the well-worn stories and memories from the full life of a mother, sister, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

However busy her life, and it usually was very busy and involved a lot of caring for others, Clare was a reader and a library user. In later years, she read mostly on her Kindle, and I wasn’t keeping up as well with what she was reading. She read mysteries – police procedurals like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books and PI series like the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike by Robert Crais and the Jack Reacher series (which she eventually had tired of) by Lee Child – and suspense/thrillers by Vince Flynn, Dan Brown, Harlan Coben — the biggies. She liked Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, etc.), at least up into the 20s, but mainly because of the wacky characters, especially Plum’s Grandma Mazur. She liked authors who wrote mysteries set in New England, especially Massachusetts, where she lived her whole life, and used to read Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane, William Tapply, and Philip R. Craig. Other old favorites were Linda Barnes (Carlotta Carlyle series) and Sue Grafton (Kinsey Milhone series). I kept pushing Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane Ryland, trying to find her some new Boston-area mystery authors, but she didn’t take to her.

With fishing in the family, Clare did read and enjoy the mysteries by Linda Greenlaw, set in Maine, I believe, and spending some of her retirement years in Florida, I think she liked reading mysteries set in Florida, too, like the ones Randy Wayne White, Donald E. Westlake, and Carl Hiaasen wrote. She liked books with strong storylines; colorful characters with a sense of humor who spoke their minds and let the chips fall where they may; and that didn’t get too “wordy”. (Get over yourself and tell the story, I can imagine her thinking with a book that lingered over detailed descriptions or delved too deep into a character’s psychological makeup). She loved children, but didn’t particularly care to hear about any adult’s “inner child”.

In recent months, Clare hadn’t been reading much and over the last year or so, I believe she had returned to old favorites, which makes sense, as it’s where we go to find comfort as well as escape in our books. Our reading tastes didn’t overlap much, except with Michael Connelly and Lee Child, because I’m not much of a mystery reader (have probably only read one, if that, of most of the other authors I’ve mentioned here, plus I tend to like authors who are “wordy”!) but I’m going to miss checking in with Clare on what she’s been reading and borrowing from the library.

My “It’s Monday, What Are You Reading” update is going to be included in this Sunday Salon post, so there will be no new post tomorrow.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb Nance at Readerbuzz. Click on the Sunday Salon image to get to the link-up to read other bookish posts.

Currently Reading

I saw The Latecomer recommended by various book bloggers recently, especially the audio edition, so I have both print and audio from the library. But I think I’m devouring the print version too fast, and will have it finished before I have much time to do more than sample the audio edition (narrated by Julia Whalen, a favorite).

Recently Read

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Elle, and LitHub!
A LibraryReads Pick for March 2023!
From Jeannette Walls, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle, comes a riveting new novel about an indomitable young woman in Virginia during Prohibition.
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.

Historical fiction set in the era of Prohibition in the U.S. South, with a strong female main character and reading group guide, Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls will make a good book club book. Told from the perspective of Sallie Kincaid – daughter of “the Duke”, the most powerful man in the county, but from a previous marriage –who grew up in semi-exile from the Big House, Hang the Moon is a story of a young woman thrust into a man’s world of guns, illegal moonshine, and fast cars in the early years of Prohibition.

Not much given to introspection, Sallie is a great heroine and the story has plenty of action and drama, but her relationships with the other characters aren’t developed enough for my liking. This is probably intentional on the part of the author, because Sallie fears herself internally flawed and incapable of fully entering into any relationship with anyone – family, friend, or lover. I wish, though, the author had given the reader additional insight into the other characters some other way. Seen only through Sallie’s eyes, the other family members, even the central figure of the Duke himself, were not fully developed and so I felt the novel was lacking in that one dimension.

Over all, though, I would recommend Hang the Moon to readers of historical, women-centered fiction who like an emphasis on the story, not on details of historical setting, fashions, and geography, although the author’s note indicates she did her research to keep historical details, such as the slang of the time, accurate.

Sallie Kincaid is a memorable character whose story alone makes the book worth reading.

Currently Listening To

Desert Star by Michael Connelly

I was glad that this Michael Connelly audio came in for me to listen to this week, since he’s one of the authors I read in common with Clare. I don’t know if Clare ever really warmed up to Renee Ballard, who seems to be placed to take over eventually as lead investigator in the cold cases that Harry Bosch was so good at solving. I don’t think she read this latest in the Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch series, which came out in November.

I don’t particularly like dual narrators, when they trade off lines of dialogue, as they do in the audio editions of this series. It never sounds right to me at first, but eventually I get used to it. This is a good continuation of the rocky partnership between Renee and Harry. Recommended!

This post is linked to “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. Check out the link-up party there for more book lists!