The Red House

Finished July 2
The Red House by Mark Haddon

This novel takes place over a week. Richard and his sister Angela have had little contact in recent years. Richard paid for his mother's nursing home and Angela visited her weekly. At the funeral of his mother, Richard is struck by the fact that this is his family and invites Angela and her family on a country vacation in Wales with his wife and stepdaughter.
Richard's wife Louisa feels that her working class background means she must work harder to please Richard by following his high culture interests. Louisa's daughter Melissa is part of the in-crowd at her school, but resents the world around her.
Angela is a good teacher, but feels her role is to be responsible for all those around her, and yet she resents anyone else taking on these tasks. She doesn't know how to nurture herself, and feels caught in the past, a past that she has mythologized. Angela's husband Dominic is a sensitive man, who feels diminished by the loss of his career as a musician. He has begun an affair with another woman in an effort to feel loved, a move not very successful for him. He wants to be a good father, but is wary about taking the lead. Their son Alex is an independent young man, with a plan for the future, a passion for adventure sports, and like most teenage boys, a strong interest in the female sex. Daughter Daisy has recently turned to religion as a place to feel wanted, but is finding that it is coming through for her as she imagined. Where does her resentment come from, and is she willing to face it? Son Benjy lives in a fantasy world in his head, a world of battles and dangers, and yet is fearful of anything that may threaten his real world.
Put all these people together in a house for a week in the country, a place with bad cellphone reception but surrounded by nature, and you get some interesting things happen.
There are realizations, decisions made, and connections that grow between family members. An interesting story of relationship dynamics.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted byMizB of Should Be Reading and it asks us to...

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!us to...us to...
  

So which of the many books I am reading do I pick? Guess the audiobook is a little too difficult so here goes:

"Next, she tackled the second strip, deposited its soil into the first strip and mixed in spadefuls of compost: Go then, and multiply. Scrambled back muscles, jagged fingernails, a smell of turned earth, a gritty feel on her hands: unfamiliar sensations became friendly, part of a repertoire that she hugged to herself."

page 224, Consider the Lily by Elizabeth Buchan

The Headmaster's Wager

Finished June 25
The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam

This novel is set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, but also looks back at the main character's life up to this point. Chen Pie Sou (Percival Chen) was born in China. His father dreamed of the Gold Mountain, earning money elsewhere to make a better life for his family. But he got caught up in the life there and seldom came home to his wife and child. When his mother died, Chen was sent to school in Hong Kong, where he learned English and set the road for his future. The Japanese invasion of Hong Kong resulted in Chen joining his father in Cholon, Vietnam and helping him back to the man he used to be.
Following the war, Chen found a new life for his father's warehouse in a school to teach English, and grew comfortable in the expat Chinese community there.
But the new war brings both trouble and opportunity. Chen's family is torn apart again, and he sinks further into the life of women and gambling that has always been a weakness. Desperate to save his school, he makes an extraordinary wager, all or nothing, that sets his future.
This is the story of four generations of Chinese men, of their pride, their love, and their dreams.
Lam gives a real sense of the life of a well-off Chinese man in Vietnam during this time period, the social situation, and the dangers. Chen is a complex man, and we see him develop over time, through his first love and marriage, and his later love. We see him as he becomes prideful, and comes to understand that pride has its place and time. He grows as a person, and has his own weaknesses and regrets, but turns out to have resourcefulness when it comes down to it.
A fascinating book, great for book clubs.

Stray Bullets

Finished June 24
Stray Bullets by Robert Rotenberg

This is the third book in the legal mystery series based in Toronto. The first was Old City Hall, followed by The Guilty Plea. We have Detective Ari Greene and Officer Kennicott back, and they both get a good share of the action both on the case and in their personal life. Another character we see back is criminal lawyer Nancy Parish.
As the book begins, Nancy is about to leave for a long-awaited vacation in Mexico. But downtown, at a Tim Hortons, a tragic situation unfolds. The jealous ex-boyfriend of one of the employees is just out of jail and she is worried he will show up, confiding in a co-worker. As she leaves at the end of her shift, her fears are realized and her ex and his friend appear as her new boyfriend arrives to pick her up. Shots are fired and a small boy is hit in the head. Security cameras pick up some of what has happened, but not the defining actions.
As the police arrive and try to make sense of things, those involved run. It is one of those, the ex-boyfriend's friend Larkin St. Clair that is Nancy's long-time client. And his picture is now on the front page of the paper. As Nancy fights to defend Larkin, and the police try to figure out what really happened at the coffee shop, the new Crown Attorney takes on his first murder case.
Giving us real insights into the legal and police worlds, Rotenberg has also taken on what seems to be a more common criminal situation today, the involvement of the innocent bystander. With the recent Eaton Centre shooting and College Street shooting, we see how more and more often criminals choose busy public places when carrying out their deadly intentions.
The writing is great, Rotenberg seems to get better and better with each book. I know he is a hot author at my library and this new release will only raise his profile further.

The Taliban Cricket Club

Finished June 23
The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N Murari

This novel is centered around Rukhsana, a young woman living with her mother and younger brother in Kabul. When she started university, her father was sent to a diplomatic post in Delhi and she took her degree there, getting a taste of the outside world and meeting a young man she has strong feelings for. But she was promised to another and dutifully went home and found a job as a journalist.
But then the Taliban came to power and she lost her job. When her family was planning to leave, her father and grandparents were killed in an accident, and Rukhsana resigned herself to waiting for a better life. She writes articles for international publications under a pseudonym and waits to join her betrothed in the United States.
But then two things happen. First the government announces an upcoming tournament for cricket. The winners will go to Pakistan for training and then will represent Afghanistan internationally. Since Rukhsana played at university, and this seems a great opportunity to leave the country, she begins to train her brother and cousins to play in the tournament. Second, the Talib Wahidi, who she has run into before as a journalist, has now demanded her as his new wife. Her family will certainly suffer if she doesn't submit to his will.
As Rukhsana hides from Wahidi and his brother, she also continues to train her cousins, determined to make the most of this opportunity and find a way through smugglers to meet them outside the country.
Giving a view into the lives people live under Taliban power, and how those who are determined find ways to circumvent the limitations on their lives when they can, we see how the strong-spirited woman Rukhsana has become pushes past her fear to do what she needs to for herself and her family. This book has humour, romance, and interesting characters. We see the importance of family loyalty and the trust that needs to be given in situations where it really could be life or death.
A great read.

The Power of Habit

Finished June 23
The Power of Habit: why we do what we do and how to change it by Charles Duhigg

This fascinatiing book looks at the nature of habits, explaining how habits work, why habits never really go away (but can be changed), and what goes on in our brains around them.
The basic structure of habits is the habit loop. Some sort of cue leads us to a routine or habit, that leads us to some sort of reward. The chapter on creating new habits led me to begin a habit I'd been unsuccessful at instilling in myself until now, flossing my teeth daily. I decided to start with this simple habit, and see how well this habit creation worked before starting some other, potentially more difficult, habits. I've found it worked very well. It also talks about how bad habits can be replaced with new, better habits.
The book doesn't only look at personal habits, it also looks at habits in terms of organizations, and in terms of society. It shows us how corporations use the study of people's habits in influence marketing and directed marketing to increase purchase of products. It also shows how societies are influenced, and changed by habits and by sudden changes in habits.
There is an appendix that walks the reader through the process of identifying the routine, reward and cue to a habit you want to change, and how to effect that change.
Just knowing how habits work and how others try to influence our habits can make us less susceptible to that influence. Awareness of both the process and one's own habitual behaviours is the first step in making changes.

Among the Departed

Finished June 23
Among the Departed by Vicki Delany

This is the first Delany mystery I've read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is part of a series featuring Constable Molly Smith, in the town of Trafalgar, BC. Molly is getting comfortable in her relatively recent relationship with RCMP officer Adam Tocek. She is with him when he gets a call about a missing child at a nearby campground. Molly accompanies Adam and his dog Norman to the site to search for the boy, and find him unharmed. They also find some bones they suspect to be human, and a new case emerges.
Based on timing and evidence, it would appear that the bones belong to Brian Nowak, the father of Molly's childhood friend Nicky. Nowak went missing fifteen years before and no trace was ever found.
With the find, Nicky return to Trafalgar from her life in Vancouver. She's left home at sixteen and lived a hard life since then. Nicky's brother Kyle became an angry reclusive young artist, and her mom withdrew into a shell, seldom leaving the house. As the case unfolds, so do the lives touched by Nowak, and we learn things aren't always how they seem.
Molly's mother also seems to be exploring a new relationship, and Molly isn't sure how to feel about it.
With interesting characters, and a great plot, this book is a winner and now I have another Canadian mystery author on my list.