Huntington Public Library Adult Reading Challenge

 Easy beach read, simplistic plot, geared to a younger audience.

This story centers around the life of a woman (Lara) who now lives on a cherry farm in Michigan with her husband Joe. When her three adult daughters return to the farm during the pandemic, they insist on their mom recounting the tale of a portion of her life when she was an actress, and later having a relationship with a famous actor, "Duke". The novel goes back and forth between the past, the tracking of Lara's acting career, the people she was involved with over the years, the various decisions she made, and the present and how she ended up on the farm, married to Joe and the mother of these three women. The character development was interesting and well done, and I liked how the pieces came together at the end of the book. I actually listened to it as an audio book, narrated by Meryl Streep, who did an excellent job! I did find it to be a little too long and drawn out.  

  The book follows the biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob & his 1st wife Leah. There is a few verses in the Bible about her, but this book takes liberties to expand on her story and follows her from childhood to her death. She is the last child and only daughter with 12 brothers, born to 4 wives/concubines , who love her and treat her like an equal given she is the only girl. Much of the story is based on what happens in the Red Tent, where women go during their menstrual cycles to be separate from the men. Dinah follows in her Aunt Rachel's footsteps and becomes a midwife, becoming renowned for her skills and ultimately causing the separation from her family.

  I enjoyed this first in a fairly new detective series which takes place in 1920s Bombay. I was hooked in by the deft interweaving of the present, with the heroine, Perveen, now working as an attorney with her father, and the past, which describes her first love and first marriage. In fact, I almost found this story more gripping and affecting than the mystery of the Widows of Malabar Hill, although there was plenty of suspense there too. Great summer read and very well done. Just borrowed number 2 in the series "The Satapur Moonstone".

  Ex-Okie farm girl becomes Manhattan socialite and leaves her rich husband for Paris, just as the Nazi's occupy the city. She is befriended by a florist, recruited by the Resistance, and becomes the sole support of 2 young Jewish girls in hiding. As expected, she attaches herself to a German officer for the purpose of gaining information. It doesn't end well for her friends, but the girls escape, the true love of her life, survives Nazi imprisonment, and she lives happily ever after running the flower shop. There are no surprises here.

  The beginning of this book was a struggle because I prefer a different style than modernist writing. It feels like it tries too hard. Yet, it was a new and novel expression, so I can respect that. One of my favorite poems is the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a modernist masterpiece. Go figure! I suspect that Dos Passos leaned too hard into the style because even though he's considered one of the greats along with Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, I can hardly find anyone that's read him. The book is about New York City and its inhabitants from the turn of the 19th Century to the late 1910s or early 1920s. It's a huge place that New York, and Dos Passos decides to insert every resident as a character. It gets a little hard to follow, but the characters are interesting if you stick with it enough. The situations they encounter start to get going by the second third of the book. Ultimately, New York City grinds along regardless of the lives that live in it, and ...

  The story is about two women living years apart, 1913 and 1973. It’s about their individual journeys to the remote Easter Island. One is an anthropologist and the other a botanist. A very interesting read if you’re into the sciences.

A Long Walk to Water starts out as two stories, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan. One is a girl in 2008, and the other is a boy in 1985. Nya, the girl, is fetching water from a pond that's a two hours' walk from her home, and she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Facing every hardship from loneliness to attach by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor.

  This is one of a series set in a sleepy English village, featuring school friends who have reconnected as adults in post-WWI England. Both are in need of friendship, and they also reflect the impact of women's changing roles in England. Beryl is an American adventurer and free spirit, Edwina a proper and respectable Englishwoman of very straightened circumstances. Together they have formed an "enquiry agency," aided by the gardener Simpkins, who also is faced with a changing role when he inherits money. There's a satisfying glimpse of a bygone village way of life, and an unexpected twist at the end.