Three Cozy Mysteries in One Book - just for fun!
Christmas Scarf Murder by Carlene O’Connor (Irish Village Mystery series)
Scarfed Down by Maddie Day (Country Store series)
Death by Christmas Scarf by Peggy Ehrhart (Knit and Nibble Mystery series)
This collection has three cozy Christmas mysteries featuring
sweater weather, Christmas trees, copious knitting, and some
entertaining crimes. This is a perfect read for lovers of cozy
mysteries.
Christmas Scarf Murder takes place in County Cork, Ireland and the murder occurs during a rehearsal for the annual Christmas tractor parade. Siobhán O’Sullivan and her husband, both police officers, must find the murderer and also apprehend the thief who stole from the local nursing home residents. Plus, they manage to complete their Christmas shopping while interviewing people at the Christmas Market! Somehow the mystery is solved in the midst of all the holiday cheer.
Scarfed Down takes place in Southern Indiana. Robbie Jordan and her restaurant employees are trying to figure out daily specials based upon the “Twelve Days of Christmas," when one of their customers dies while knitting – with poisoned yarn! Robbie must prove that her Aunt Adele, who made the yarn, has nothing to do with the death. Some of the dialogue was a little over the top (‘Well, butter my buns and call me biscuit.’), and it made the characters seem like they should have been from the South instead of the Midwest. But it did include some heroic cats so that made up for the dialogue.😼
Death by Christmas Scarf takes place in New Jersey. Pamela and her friend, Bettina, are members of a knitting club. Each member knitted and donated a Christmas scarf to the library fundraising auction. Unfortunately, one of the donated scarves was used to strangle the local “sourpuss.” Pamela and Bettina try to figure out who murdered the woman and exonerate the person who bid on the deadly scarf.
Recipes are included as well as instructions on how to knit a teddy bear.
Bomboozled: How the U.S. Government Misled Itself and Its People Into Believing They Could Survive A Nuclear Attack by Susan Roy
Young Adult Non-fiction: History/Biography
The Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero by Patricia McCormick
This book has short, chronological chapters. Each chapter begins by drawing readers into Bonhoeffer’s personal story and closes with hints indicating his larger historical role. I learned a great deal about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian and Lutheran pastor; his efforts to warn the world about the horrors of Hitler’s Germany; and his conversion from pacifism to would-be assassin in a failed effort to overthrow Hitler.
The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy by Blaine T. Bettinger
This is a thorough and comprehensive guide for understanding all aspects of DNA testing. It discusses the different types of genetic testing including Mitochondrial DNA, Y-Chromosomal, and Autosomal-DNA. It also addresses the methods and advantages of each company's testing and results. Personally, I was most interested in the Ancestry section because that is what I used to better understand my DNA results.
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd
At 528 pages this is not a quick read. However, I could not put this book down. Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of my favorite American novels and I am so glad I finally learned about the amazing woman who wrote it!
Born in Alabama in 1891, Zora Neal Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. In this close-knit community - the first incorporated all-black town in America - she spent a pleasant childhood, happily taking in the rich language and folk culture of the rural black South. Following her mother’s death, her father swiftly remarried which led to the family's disintegration. Hurston, a young teenager, spent the next decade wandering from menial job to menial job.
Reinventing herself at the age of twenty-six, she entered high school in Baltimore by claiming to be ten years younger. Hurston then went on to attend Howard University and Barnard College. She trained as an anthropologist and traveled throughout the South and the Caribbean collecting folklore, music, games and religious practices. She also participated in the Harlem Renaissance.
In stark contrast to her optimistic youth, by the end of Hurston’s life she wrote that "she had been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots". She died, out of print and out of work, in a welfare nursing home in Florida. She was buried in a bright pink dressing gown and fuzzy slippers, laid to rest in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery.
Zora Neale Hurston published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Although she enjoyed some popularity during her lifetime, her greatest acclaim has come posthumously.
The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell
The second essay describes the possibility and consequences of a human extinction. Schell argues that the delicate balance in nature will be totally upset following a nuclear exchange leading to extinction of plants, animals and humans. Up until 1945 every war was contained within the risk of the loss of individual lives, but with nuclear bombs the whole of humanity is at risk of extinction. With a nuclear exchange, even if there are survivors of the initial blasts, fires, and radiation, the biosphere will be unfit for human survival. A nuclear exchange puts all life on the planet at ecological peril.
The third essay is entitled “The Choice.” Here Schnell discusses the importance of scientific knowledge and political will. The scientific knowledge that gave rise to nuclear weapons is global and everlasting. This scientific knowledge enables us to build nuclear weapons but it also condemns us to live forever with the threat of nuclear war. Political will decides when to deploy nuclear weapons.
Historically, nations have engaged in war either to expand their geopolitical will or to stop another nation from imposing their geopolitical will upon them. While the threat of war has been used to ensure national sovereignty for centuries, it is clear that a nuclear war has no “winners,” so what is the point of having nuclear weapons?
Finally, Schell offered his ideas for a feasible plan to head off nuclear conflict. He suggested two ultimate requirements for survival - global disarmament, both nuclear and conventional, and the invention of political means by which the world can peacefully settle geopolitical issues without reverting to war – decreasing the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used.
As it happened, the end of the Cold War put this issue on the back burner, although nuclear war is still more of a danger than most people realize, either by way of regional warfare, terrorism, or nuclear accident.
Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 by Charles C. Mann
After watching a documentary about "explorer" Hernando de Soto (produced by the Chickasaw Nation) and talking with an archaeologist at the Florida Division of Historical Resources, I realized the usual textbook story of Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors arriving in the Americas to find an unspoiled, barely populated wilderness, was incorrect! Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them.
For example, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that has been called human’s first feat of genetic engineering. All major groups and most geographic zones are covered quite well with special emphasis on the Mayans, Olmecs and the Incas. Mann also discusses the role of disease in the European conquest of the Americas (sadly, too often overlooked!) and the importance of the development of maize.
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
I read somewhere that this book was recommended by Stephen King. He said, “Several sleepless nights are guaranteed," so I thought I would give it a try.
Slowly and deliberately, the novel creeps through a year-long series of weird events. Set in the post-WWII English countryside, an entire British way of life that focused on social class is fading fast and the Ayres family and their Hundreds Hall are crumbling into decline. A doctor befriends the family and he, too, is drawn into the series of strange, and seemingly, otherworldly catastrophes that befell the family in their deteriorating mansion.
No comments:
Post a Comment