The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong

I think it is safe to say I am in a reading slump. It is March 14th and this is only the second book I have managed to finish this year. Both books have been complete misses for me, so it has been hard to get motivated to pick them up.

This one was my book club choice for February. I was fortunate that the meeting got canceled and rescheduled for next week because I just couldn't get into it at all.

A blend of fiction and history, this book tells to story of Charlotte Taylor, the actual great-great-grandmother of the author. Charlotte was one of the first women to settle on the east coast of Canada (in what eventually became New Brunswick) and was a tough cookie. She fled a fairly affluent life in England to be with the man she loved, her family's black butler. They dreamed of a new life together in the West Indies, but that wasn't meant to be.  She ended up in what was then known as Nova Scotia, a woman alone.

That was not an easy time or place to be a woman, especially a woman without the protection of a husband or father. But Charlotte wasn't going to let that stand in her way. She is bold, unconventional and fierce. She befriends the settles and the People (how our First Nations were known at that time) which makes it hard for her to be accepted by either group properly.

Yet Charlotte manages to build a life for herself, overcoming many huge obstacles.

As I write this, it sounds super interesting to me. The summary seems good. However, for me, the book itself was just a complete dud. I found the writing style to be very boring (I wonder if it was self-published because I found a couple of spelling and grammatical errors). This is a very timely book, bringing greater understanding to the difficulties faced by our First Nations in the early days of Canada's history, with an incredibly strong female lead character. I just wish I was enjoyed it more.

Maybe it's just my slump talking. I'm taking a break from book club reading to read a book I picked up on my lunch break at work last week. It's by an author I've loved in the past so I'm hoping that will get me excited about reading again.

Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy

I should have known better than to read this book. I know myself well enough to know that I don't like other authors taking on my favourite characters and I should have left this one alone. But I had read some good reviews and curiosity got the best of me so I read it. It took me a month to get through and I just didn't enjoy it.

Sarah McCoy was intrigued by a paragraph towards the end of Anne of Green Gables where Marilla reveals to Anne that Gilbert's father, John Blythe, had once been her good friend, even her beau. Sarah wondered what had happened and wrote this book to answer that question. She begins the story when Marilla Cuthbert is 13 years old living in a newly built house (the Gables) with her parents and brother Matthew. Their mother is expecting a new baby and her twin sister comes from Ontario to visit in preparation for the new arrival.

The story goes on to tell what Marilla's life might have been like in Avonlea in the mid-1800's. She develops a friendship with Rachel White (Lynde) and John Blythe. She becomes involved with the political uprisings in Canada before Confederation and also in the Underground Railroad. There are deaths in the family and she learns how to deal with those and carry on.

Sarah McCoy isn't Lucy Maud Montgomery and doesn't claim to be. Sometimes I felt her take on Marilla was right on the money but most of the time I just wasn't feeling it. Aside from that, I just found the story to be incredibly boring. It didn't draw me in at all, which is mostly why it took me so long to read it.

I felt the characters to be fairly true to the originals with some small things that didn't sit right with me. I didn't feel like she got Rachel Lynde's character right at all, and there were a few things about Matthew that I didn't agree with either (in Anne he says he had never done any courting, so why is he courting in this book???) . In the original books we can see that Marilla has some political leanings so I feel like her exploring these areas was pretty realistic for her. I liked how the author wove some of the old Avonlea families into this story, it was good to see some familiar names.

If it wasn't for the Green Gables connection I wouldn't have read this book. That was barely enough to keep me going to the end. Maybe if you haven't read Anne of Green Gables 7,000 times you might like this more than I did. I think my expectations were just too high.

Educated by Tara Westover

I have had this book recommended to me by several different people but never got around to reading it. Then it was chosen as our January book for book club so I was excited to get reading.

I'm not always a lover of non-fiction but there have been some recent exceptions to that (Unbroken, The Glass Castle and Thunderdog immediately come to mind). If you liked any of those books, you will probably enjoy this one as well.

This is the story of Tara Westover who grew up in rural Idaho. Her father, a devout Mormon, doesn't believe in government, medicine, or education. As a girl, Tara is being raised to be a wife and mother. Her father owns a junkyard and often puts all his children to work there, frequently in unsafe conditions. Tara is the youngest of seven children and by the time she comes along, homeschooling has been mostly forgotten and she is put to work in the junkyard, or occasionally helping her mother as the local midwife.

Eventually, at the urging of one of her brothers, Tara takes the ACT and earns a scholarship to university. Once there she realizes how unprepared she is for life in the real world and how little knowledge she has of anything that wasn't on the ACT. She learns how to learn and becomes a dedicated student.

At the same time her family is in turmoil, their unsafe working/living conditions cause several family members to be injured in accidents. The family doesn't believe in modern medicine (Tara never even took Tylenol until she was at a friend's house as a teenager) so many of them don't receive the proper care for their injuries. She suffers horrible abuse at the hands of one of her brothers and her parents turn a blind eye to it.

In spite of all this, Tara rises above her circumstances to move on to a life outside of Idaho. Her strength and resilience are inspiring.

Some members of her family are speaking out against the book so it can be hard to know where the truth lies. However I still found this to be a compelling read (I read most of it on a 2-hour flight yesterday). I highly recommend it and would love to talk it over with anyone who has read it.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

I heard about this book several years ago and picked it up a good while back but for some reason I just never got around to reading it. So when I needed to pick a book for my book club for this year I decided to choose this one so I would finally get it read. I'm so glad I did.

A.J. Fikry lives on Alice Island, on the Northeast Coast of the United States, not far from Providence, Rhode Island. Although still a young man, he has been recently widowed after his wife dies in a car accident. A.J. is still running their independent book store but his heart is no longer in it. He's drinking heavily, not taking care of himself and hating his life. The one item of value he had in his life was a rare copy of Tamerlane by Edgar Allan Poe and it gets stolen from his house one night after he has had too much to drink. This book was his retirement savings plan and now his financial future is uncertain because the book store isn't making a lot of money.

Then one day there is an unexpected delivery at the store and A.J.'s life changes in an instant.

This is a delightful read, filled with talk about other books. Because A.J. runs a book store he is always talking about books with other characters. Book lovers will love that aspect of the story. I love A.J.'s opinionated ways and his strong feelings about literature (many of which I share). The book is filled with fun characters and an engaging story. Maybe it all comes together a little too easily, but it is still a sweet little book. It won't take you long to read it, but almost everyone in our book club enjoyed it. One member said she wasn't really getting into it, but everyone else really enjoyed it.

I really don't think you can go wrong with this one, especially if you are the type of person who could spend hours browsing in an independent or used book store. This one was a big hit for me.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Only four people were able to attend our book club meeting last weekend and none of us had finished the book. It was expensive with long waits at the library so some of us had a hard time getting our hands on a copy. I actually bought a digital copy (which I really don't like doing, I love turning actual pages) so I could read it. I'm so glad I did. This one was a big win for me.

This is the story of Count Alexander Rostov who, in 1922, was tried and convicted of being an "unrepentant aristocrat" and sentenced to life under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. He is given a tiny room in the attics of the hotel and eventually given a job as the head waiter in their high end restaurant. The Count is forced to watch as the Russia he loves crumbles and is replaced by new leaders and new ideology. From his place within the hotel he watches the  country change over the course of several decades. He creates a family made up of the employees of the hotel, along with some other notable guests. As he ages he is given the responsibility of raising his friend's daughter, Sophia. Not knowing anything about children he is a bit overwhelmed at first but can't imagine how big a role Sophia would go on to play in his life.

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about Russia's history but I found this to be a fascinating read as you see how the ideologies shifted and how that affected the people. I was intrigued by stories of propaganda (rural peasants not being allowed in the cities, city residents not being allowed in the country, train windows being blacked out) so no one could truly see how others were being affected by all the changes.

In addition to being a great story it was also beautifully written. Some parts were quite funny, some heartbreaking, but it was all beautifully done. This guy definitely has a way with words.

If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, this isn't the book for you. It's certainly not a page-turner in the traditional sense. Because it is all set in the hotel, there's not a lot happening. But the wonderful writing, fascinating history and interesting characters combine to make a fantastic, quiet read.

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year Old Man by Jonas Jonasson

Several years ago, I, like many others, found myself completely enamoured with Allan Karlsson, The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Then Disappeared. I found the book to be incredibly unique and laugh-out-loud funny. I bought it as a gift for several people and recommended it highly.

I hesitatingly watched the movie when it was on Netflix and really enjoyed that as well.

I started another book by the same author the next year (The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden) but just couldn't get into it. It is one of three books I have abandoned in my reading career (accompanied by Catch-22 and Captain Corelli's Mandolin). It just wasn't for me. Last year Rob read and thoroughly enjoyed Jonasson's Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All  but after my experience with  The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden I didn't read it myself.

For this reason I found myself a bit torn when I saw this book in Costco this summer. I just wasn't sure what I would think of it. Would it recapture the magic of the first book or would it mirror his later writing that I didn't enjoy? The first book is one of Rob's all-time favourite books so he bought it right away. He has been too busy with work to read so he gave it to me to read first under strict instructions not to reveal anything about the book to him.

Soooo, it's good he's probably not reading this.

It was a huge disappointment. There were a few funny sentences here and there, but overall it just wasn't interesting. It was very political which just isn't my thing. There are no flashbacks to Allan's past in this book (I guess the whole 100 years had been covered in the first book) so it was all set in the current day. Donald Trump, Kim Jong-Un and Angela Merkel are all characters. This is more of an ensemble story so Allan is almost like a supporting character (and kind of an annoying one at that). We all know Donald Trump is unstable and boorish. I hear about it on the news all the time. I read to get away from that sort of thing.

I did read to the end, but it wasn't worth it. If you loved the first one, like I did, then leave it at that. Don't spoil your image of that book by reading this one.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

I first heard about this book back when it was released and I saw an interview with the author on television. It seemed like a fun read, but I never got around to it. A couple of weeks ago I was in a book store with a gift card and it was on display again, preparing for the upcoming release of the movie. While in the store both a staff member and other customers saw me looking at it and recommended it highly. So I picked it up.

I'd call this one a fun summer read. Definitely not my favourite book of all time, but still fun.

This is the story of Rachel Chu, a Economics Professor in New York City. Her boyfriend, Nick Young, invites her to travel to Singapore with him for his best friend's wedding. What he doesn't tell her is that his family is one of the wealthiest families in Singapore and that this wedding is on par with a royal wedding. Rachel is completely unprepared for the lavish, extravagant lifestyle Nick's family leads and it leads to all sorts of problems.

Nick's mother doesn't know he is dating Rachel and isn't happy that Rachel doesn't come from a recognizable family tree. She wants Nick to marry someone rich, who can add to the family fortune. Nick's wife must be someone from the "right kind" of family and Rachel doesn't fit that bill.

I feel like some of these scenes were written with a possible movie in mind. The beautiful settings, incredibly scenery and over-the-top luxury will look incredible on the big screen.

The book is supposed to satirize the lifestyle these people lead, but at times I just found their disregard for how much things cost disturbing. The amount of money wasted was troubling at times.

One criticism I have is that when words need to be translated, this was done in a footnote at the bottom of the page. If I read that word again and couldn't remember where it was first mentioned, it was hard to find the right footnote. I would have preferred a glossary of Chinese terms at the end of the book as an easier reference.

For the most part, a fun read. I'll probably read the other two books in the series just to see where the story goes.