Bill Kupersmith’s books on Goodreads (983 books) (original) (raw)

The Big Books of Summer 2025

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| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | ------ | | | checkbox | position | cover [Sentimental Education (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #43]](/book/show/28683336-sentimental-education-centaur-classics-the-100-greatest-novels-of-all) | title Sentimental Education (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #43] | author Flaubert, Gustave | isbn 8892542478 | isbn13 9788892542471 | asin B01AL0CK4M | num pages 580pp | avg rating 3.81 | num ratings 23,974 | date pub Apr 15, 1869 | date pub edition Jan 13, 2016 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Jul 02, 2025 | date read not set | date added Jul 02, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Dark Hours | title The Dark Hours | author Jordan, Amy | isbn 077838781X | isbn13 9780778387817 | asin 077838781X | num pages 320pp | avg rating 3.79 | num ratings 2,169 | date pub Jan 28, 2025 | date pub edition Jan 28, 2025 | Bill's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 2 | date started Jun 2025 not set | date read Jun 29, 2025 not set | date added Jul 01, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover A Cousin Removed (DCI Millson & DS Scobie #2) | title A Cousin Removed(DCI Millson & DS Scobie #2) | author Forsythe, Malcolm | isbn 183901606X | isbn13 9781839016066 | asin B0C86NPWJF | num pages 208pp | avg rating 4.10 | num ratings 314 | date pub 1992 | date pub edition Jun 14, 2023 | Bill's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Jun 30, 2025 | date read Jul 02, 2025 | date added Jul 01, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Don't Let Him In | title Don't Let Him In | author Jewell, Lisa * | isbn | isbn13 | asin B0DJK54HR8 | num pages 368pp | avg rating 3.84 | num ratings 8,623 | date pub Jun 24, 2025 | date pub edition Jun 24, 2025 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Jun 25, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Peepshow | title The Peepshow | author Summerscale, Kate | isbn 1526660490 | isbn13 9781526660497 | asin B0D38FZ59S | num pages 317pp | avg rating 3.75 | num ratings 1,524 | date pub Oct 03, 2024 | date pub edition Oct 03, 2024 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review The most sinister address in the annals of British crime is likely 10 Rillington Place, so reeking of murder that the very place has been erased from The most sinister address in the annals of British crime is likely 10 Rillington Place, so reeking of murder that the very place has been erased from the geography of London. The bodies of the wife and daughter of Tim Evans were discovered at that site, and in 1950 Evans was convicted by a British jury and the sentence of death by hanging was carried out, with Evans proclaiming his innocence to the end. It seemed just another squalid murder by an unintelligent and brutish man till three years later a new tenant of another flat in the building made a hole in the kitchen wall and uncovered a three dead bodies in a hidden cupboard and one more beneath the floorboards, including that of the wife of the previous tenant, John Christie. Later the police found more bodies of women buried in the garden. A week later Christie was apprehended. He would be tried, convicted of murder, and executed at Pentonville prison, by the famous hangman Albert Pierrepont, who had performed the same service for Evans. The coincidence of two convicted and executed murderers inhabiting the same premises was treated with remarkable aplomb by the political and legal establishment, though it did not fail to achieve notice by either the public or politicians of the Opposition Labour party. It always surprises laymen (who have not been imbued with the principles of ‘legal reasoning’) that in our Anglo-Saxon legal system the question of whether the convicted felon actually did the crime is immaterial, it was obvious that whilst Evans had received a fair trial (indeed, he had confessed to police though he later repudiated it), no jury would ever have convicted him had they known that 10 Rillington Place also housed a serial killer and the remains of his victims. The Evans case became the prime example for the movement to abolish hanging. Which is how as a youth I first became aware of the story, from Ewan MacColl’s rendition of the crime ballad ‘Go Down, You Murderer’. The address 10 Rillington Place became the title of a book by Ludovic Kennedy and a film as well, and years later Evans received a posthumous pardon from the Queen. What has Kate Summerscale added, some 67 years later? Most strikingly, a fascinating picture of British popular culture and life in the immediate post-war period. The discovery of the bodies and the arrest and trial of Christie caused a frenzy in the popular press. Summerscale focuses on one newspaper reporter, Harry Proctor, who had a special access to Christie because his newspaper was bankrolling his defence. (Americans are sometimes shocked by the antics of the British popular press, which uses ‘cheque-book journalism’ to manufacture the stories that shift their papers in the on-going battle for circulation. Personally I’m amused by the old-fashioned notion that reporters are basically a bunch of drunks hired to libel whomever their employers the Press Lords don’t like, rather than sanctimonious ‘journalists’ defending ‘our democracy’.) Christie’s murders dated from wartime or before. Prostitutes were amongst his victims. Despite a criminal record for minor offences, he received an appointment as a reserve policeman, and the blackout provided serial killers with the chance to go about unobserved. A good proportion of the population had been trained to kill with their bare hands. Abortions then were illegal and Christie also professed to perform them. In wartime with lots of married women’s husbands away in the forces, there was a lot of demand for such services. With the prospect of sudden death from the skies every night, one was likely to be careless about with whom one went home. And prostitution could easily pay more than many legitimate jobs then available to women. I think Kate Summerscale is the best author of historical true-crime books today. Sometimes, as in her book on poltergeists, you find out more than you ever wanted to know. With a protagonist as squalid as Christie, that’s easy. But mostly I was utterly fascinated by her depiction of a by-gone world barely in living memory. Does she offer any new insight on whether Evans was innocent? Yes, she does, but you’ll have to read the book. No spoilers. But I’ll reveal that if she is right, it explains why Evans might have turned himself in to the police and confessed, and yet later claimed innocence. There is something highly appropriate in a strangler like Christie finishing at the end of a rope. Still, I’m glad hanging has been abolished. Lately I’ve been concerned with the case of nurse Lucy Letby, the convicted neonatal serial killer serving a full-life sentence. In the old days she would now be buried in quicklime in a prison yard. But many now find the evidence against her—entirely circumstantial and based on statistics—unconvincing. At least there’s still hope for her. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 3 | # times read 1 | date started Jun 08, 2025 | date read Jun 09, 2025 | date added Jun 10, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover She Stoops to Conquer | title She Stoops to Conquer | author Goldsmith, Oliver | isbn 141914698X | isbn13 9781419146985 | asin 141914698X | num pages 84pp | avg rating 3.65 | num ratings 12,158 | date pub 1773 | date pub edition Jun 17, 2004 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Generally I dislike the kind of humour that depends on a character’s making embarrassing mistakes, too easily imagining myself in similar situations. Generally I dislike the kind of humour that depends on a character’s making embarrassing mistakes, too easily imagining myself in similar situations. She Stoops to Conquer is so intellectually vacuous that it offers little that needs critical comment. The older view was that Goldsmith and Sheridan were attempting to revive the wit of Restoration Comedy (basically 1660 to 1700) but for a later 18th-century middle-class audience less tolerant of sexual situations and innuendo. (Readers of Evelina will recall that she disapproved of Congreve’s Love for Love; that performance was real and it was not a success.) The only jokes in She Stoops I found funny were Marlow’s drunken servants. Thinking Hardcastle was an innkeeper, Marlow would have expected Hardcastle should have been delighted Marlow’s servants were running up a huge bar bill, whereas of course they were freeloading in the servants hall. (In real life, Hardcastle’s butler would doubtless have had word with his master.) Goldsmith’s contemporaries such as Johnson and Boswell remarked on Goldsmith’s lack of what we would call social skills, which may have inspired Marlow’s reticence in polite company. For an audience today, Today the cavalier treatment of the servants (including the supposed barmaid) would be distasteful. But in the 18th century I expect one would be as surprised at the notion one should be considerate to one’s servants as I would be if you thought I should care about the feelings of my refrigerator. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started May 25, 2025 | date read Jun 02, 2025 | date added Jun 03, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World | title Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World | author Alexander, Caroline | isbn 1984879235 | isbn13 9781984879233 | asin 1984879235 | num pages 496pp | avg rating 3.92 | num ratings 545 | date pub unknown | date pub edition May 14, 2024 | Bill's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review The four-star rating is not a judgment on the author’s research and presentation, but the confused subject. The Burma campaigns (the plural is appropr The four-star rating is not a judgment on the author’s research and presentation, but the confused subject. The Burma campaigns (the plural is appropriate) themselves were utterly incoherent. Both America and Britain were fighting the Japanese, but mostly on different fronts. Britain was fighting to recover her Empire (which Franklin Roosevelt wanted to destroy). The Americans were doing little actual fighting but making a huge logistical effort to aid the Chinese (whom Britain regarded as useless). The American commander, General Stillwell, despised most British leaders (though he managed to get on with Mountbatten) as well as his nominal superior Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the President of China. Roosevelt fancied Chiang an allied leader on par with Churchill and Stalin, slated to be one of the “four policemen” to insure the peace in the post-war order. The American plan was to open the road through Burma to supply Chiang’s forces, who were supposed to be fighting the Japanese invaders, as well as to build airfields for American bombers to attack the Japanese home islands. To accomplish this, the American Army Air Force was trying to supply the Chinese by air, flying over the Himalayas, “the hump,” from India.Like most young folk, I was fascinated by the bomber campaign and the aircraft, B-17s and B-24s, as well as the Halifax and the Lancaster, but in my childish ignorance imagined being a transport pilot as about as heroic as driving a Greyhound bus. But these missions were utterly terrifying. The weather was terrible, with sudden violent storms, few navigational aids, clapped out aircrafts, and if one had to bail out impenetrable jungle below full of loathsome creatures. Fortunately the Burmese tribesmen were friendly, though head-hunters they hated the Japanese. And while some of the American pilots were experienced airline captains, most were straight out of flight school and hardly at the head of the class. At their home base in India there was a herpetological zoo to familiarize them with the venomous local fauna. I doubt that made the prospect of parachuting into the jungle any more inviting. Even worse, scratch crews flew whatever aircraft were assigned, unlike in bomber squadrons where the same crew flew together in the same aircraft and learned to support and trust each other. Though the transport pilots were seldom attacked by Japanese fighters and ack-ack, the terrain and weather made their missions horrific. And when they completed their mission, unlike bomber crews in England, there was no motoring to the pub and dates with the local girls. Their facilities in India were sparse, uncomfortable, hot, and boring. What they encountered in China was worse.The aircraft were the C-47 or Dakota in British service, the military cargo version of the DC-3 airliner and though scarcely glamorous, probably the greatest development in aviation history. But its cargo capacity was limited. I’ve always been fascinated by the C-46 though I’ve never encountered one in airline service. It looks like a grown-up C-47, but unfortunately it proved unreliable, though you might still find one flying arms into or opium out of some jungle airstrip. There was also the C-87, a hastily cobbled together cargo version of the B-24 whose high aspect-ratio wings lacked lift and flew even worse than its bomber original.British objectives were totally different, to recapture Rangoon and recover Malaya and Singapore. I have already given my views on the British campaign in reviews of The Unforgettable Army: Slim's XIVth Army in Burma by Michael Hickey and Lions in the Jungle: Wingate & the Chindits’ Contribution to the Burma Victory: February 1943 – August 1944 by Martin Sambrook, on Goodreads. Amusingly, the level of cooperation between the American Air Force Colonel Phil Cochran and the creator of the Chindits Orde Wingate is one of brightest accomplishments in the history of Anglo-American relations, much better than between the British Army and the RAF and infinitely superior to how the Americans got on with the Chinese. Despite optimistic American plans for the re-equipped and re-trained Chinese army pushing the Japanese to the sea, the real state of affairs was different. Chiang’s forces and the Japanese were observing a tacit cease-fire. Chiang was hoarding the supplies the Americans delivered at such cost for the impending civil war with the Communists. (Some later to be used by the enemy in Korea and Vietnam.) Neither neutralist India nor authoritarian Myanmar (as its rulers now insist we call it, though I notice their exiled and jailed opponents still use the traditional name), nor of course Communist China, turned out to remotely resemble what either the American or the British wartime leaders expected. But that does not mean we should forget the bravery and sacrifice of the Americans and of the men of the British Empire who fought in that remote theatre. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 1 | votes 4 | # times read 1 | date started Jun 05, 2025 | date read Jun 06, 2025 | date added Jun 01, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover We Live Here Now | title We Live Here Now | author Pinborough, Sarah * | isbn 1250343852 | isbn13 9781250343857 | asin B0DHV5DGJT | num pages 286pp | avg rating 3.77 | num ratings 3,891 | date pub May 20, 2025 | date pub edition May 20, 2025 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review A New Twist on Haunted HousesFreddy and Emily have moved into an old house they hope will repair their marriage. And in a strange way, it does. You ma A New Twist on Haunted HousesFreddy and Emily have moved into an old house they hope will repair their marriage. And in a strange way, it does. You may not like the ending, but it's inevitable and appropriate. Sarah Pinborough's best since Behind Her Eyes. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 2 | # times read 1 | date started May 30, 2025 | date read Jun 19, 2025 | date added May 30, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Origins of AIDS | title The Origins of AIDS | author Pepin, Jacques | isbn 0521186374 | isbn13 9780521186377 | asin 0521186374 | num pages 310pp | avg rating 4.21 | num ratings 634 | date pub Jul 27, 2011 | date pub edition Sep 01, 2011 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review This review is of the 2nd edition, published 2021.Medical history shares with military history a strong flavour of the epic and the tragic, as well as This review is of the 2nd edition, published 2021.Medical history shares with military history a strong flavour of the epic and the tragic, as well as many features of the classic detective story. Jacques Pépin’s The Origins of AIDS traces the epidemic to colonial Africa around the beginning of the last century, when the virus was first transmitted from a chimpanzee to a human being. By tracing the genetics of this virus backwards, it is possible to discover the precise variety of chimpanzee that contributed this lethal pathogen. Because chimpanzees in the wild live in isolated groups, it is also possible to discover where it lived, near the remote town of Moloundou, in Cameroon. The ape was probably killed for food, what Africans call ‘bush meat’. The hunter may have been wounded by the animal, or the cook accidently cut whilst butchering it; in either case there was blood-contact and the virus found a human host. From there the virus made its way to Léopoldville, the principal city in the Belgian Congo and a major trading centre. As a sexually transmitted disease, its spread would have been facilitated by the large number of single men needed as workers, and the prostitutes who served their needs. But medicine probably played a role as well. Both French and Belgian colonial authorities attempted to alleviate the tropical diseases like sleeping sickness and malaria endemic to the region of central Africa, often without the facilities to sterilise needles. The oldest physical evidence of the virus itself is a blood specimen taken from a man who died in 1959, not coincidentally just before the colony became independent and immediately erupted in a civil war that would figure as well in the transmission of the disease. A good many of the UN relief workers who travelled to the Congo were Haitians, being French speakers of African descent, and some of them acquired the virus and took it back home to Haiti. From there sex tourists brought it to North America. As it typically takes a decade to pass from infection with HIV to a diagnosis of ‘full-blown’ AIDS, the virus had an opportunity to spread to millions before a strange form of pneumonia appeared amongst gay men in California in 1980 and the world was in the midst of an epidemic causing many millions of deaths to victims ranging from derelict drug users to movie stars.The likely date that the virus was transmitted from chimpanzee to human was sometime in the first three decades of the 20th century. That’s what fascinated me as a history buff as well as ex-literary scholar. When I first read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a schoolboy, nobody bothered to notice it was about the Belgian Congo, more precisely the Congo Free State. (The sadistic sergeant in P. C. Wren’s Beau Geste had been a rubber factor there.) Conrad’s book was based on his experience captaining a Congo riverboat. And the HIV may have been brought originally by a riverboat man to Léopoldville. But alternatively there is another possibility. Before the First World War, Cameroon was Kamerun, a German colony. Whilst I knew about the campaigns in East Africa between the Germans and the British, I’d not been previously aware that Kamerun was invaded in 1914-1916 by a mixed force of French and Belgian colonial troops.On page 301 there is a photograph creepy as all get-out. It shows a man and a chimpanzee sitting alongside each other. The man is wearing a hat like a fez and propped in front of him is his rifle (looks like it might be an old single-shot, not a magazine-loader) barrel resting on his shoulder. According to the caption, the man is a Belgian soldier (probably a member of the colonial Force Publique) and the ape is dead. But it looks alive, or like a giant stuffed toy. And it seems to have an expression similar to the soldier’s. (Probably the photograph was taken by a racist European officer—few Africans then would likely own cameras—who thought this a huge joke). From the French military archives Pépin discovered that the Franco-Belgian invading force was chronically short of supplies, relying on bearers plagued by death and desertion, and their men were trying to live off the country by shooting and eating anything that moved. (Pépin is censorious that European officers were supplied half a litre of wine per day, but by standards of the time that was positively abstemious. French soldiers going up the line to Verdun were given two to four times that much cheap wine to anaesthetise them to the horrors they were about to face.) So it is quite possible that the first human to host the HIV virus was one of those colonial troops. Maybe he cut himself with his bayonet whilst carving up a chimpanzee he had shot. Though as the soldiers’ sexual appetites were virulent as well, he may have raped a local woman who was already infected. Whatever the route, the terrible crimes first inflicted by the Europeans on the Africans were finally to be revisited on the whole world through a most unlikely but utterly poignant chain of events driven by chance and greed and desire. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started May 27, 2025 | date read May 29, 2025 | date added May 27, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Generals at War: Montgomery's Chief of Staff Assesses World War Two Leadership and Strategy (The Life and Memories of Montgomery's Right-Hand Man Book 2) | title Generals at War: Montgomery's Chief of Staff Assesses World War Two Leadership and Strategy(The Life and Memories of Montgomery's Right-Hand Man Book 2) | author GUINGAND, Francis DE | isbn 0854951741 | isbn13 9780854951741 | asin B0D41XM6VN | num pages 276pp | avg rating 4.03 | num ratings 63 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Aug 11, 2024 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started May 14, 2025 | date read not set | date added May 14, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There | title I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There | author Lanigan, Róisín | isbn 0241668557 | isbn13 9780241668559 | asin B0CW1BBZ6Y | num pages 288pp | avg rating 3.52 | num ratings 549 | date pub Mar 20, 2025 | date pub edition Mar 20, 2025 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 2 | date started May 10, 2025 May 06, 2025 | date read May 12, 2025 not set | date added May 10, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Traveller and The Deserted Village | title The Traveller and The Deserted Village | author Goldsmith, Oliver | isbn 1107682614 | isbn13 9781107682610 | asin 1107682614 | num pages 106pp | avg rating 3.88 | num ratings 17 | date pub Jan 28, 2010 | date pub edition May 29, 2014 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started May 07, 2025 | date read not set | date added May 04, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Former Naval Person: Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy (Leading the Modern Royal Navy) | title Former Naval Person: Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy | author Gretton, Peter | isbn 180055270X | isbn13 9781800552708 | asin B0999MYWKF | num pages 417pp | avg rating 4.36 | num ratings 28 | date pub 1968 | date pub edition Oct 10, 2021 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Feb 28, 2025 | date read Apr 30, 2025 | date added Apr 30, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Gravity and Grace | title Gravity and Grace | author Weil, Simone | isbn 0415290015 | isbn13 9780415290012 | asin 0415290015 | num pages 224pp | avg rating 4.27 | num ratings 3,499 | date pub 1947 | date pub edition Sep 12, 2002 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Apr 29, 2025 | date read not set | date added Apr 29, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Saltwater | title Saltwater | author Hays, Katy * | isbn 0593875559 | isbn13 9780593875551 | asin 0593875559 | num pages 336pp | avg rating 3.59 | num ratings 6,716 | date pub Mar 25, 2025 | date pub edition Mar 25, 2025 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 2 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read May 21, 2025 | date added Apr 21, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Looking for Abigail (Sharma and Jackson #2) | title Looking for Abigail(Sharma and Jackson #2) | author Cameron, Iain * | isbn | isbn13 | asin B0DSC23RBF | num pages 401pp | avg rating 3.86 | num ratings 14 | date pub Jan 31, 2025 | date pub edition Jan 31, 2025 | Bill's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Some years ago I had the good fortune to spend a week in Norwich visiting my brilliant niece Violet Kupersmith, who was a visiting fellow at UEA. Not Some years ago I had the good fortune to spend a week in Norwich visiting my brilliant niece Violet Kupersmith, who was a visiting fellow at UEA. Not only had I the opportunity to view some of the most extreme examples of the British Brutalist school of architecture, as well as a campus populated by innumerable rabbits (I hope the bunnies have not all succumbed to this new disease), but it was Holy Week and I could participate in the services at the Cathedral, which I was quite pleased figured in novel, as well as other sights I recall. We have a partner in a Norwich legal firm specialising in property who acquired his position by inheritance when his wife was killed in a riding accident, with some rumours about that it may not have been entirely accidental. And into the firm enters a new employee, the very attractive and smart Abigail Graham, who gives this book its title, and may be just a little too perfect to be quite who she is supposed to be. My only quarrel with this this book is that I found her much more engaging and interesting than with of the detectives who are supposed to be the main characters of the series. If she reappears in another book, I quite want to read it. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started Apr 19, 2025 | date read May 07, 2025 | date added Apr 19, 2025 | owned | format Kindle Edition | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Novels 1901–1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove | title Novels 1901–1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove | author James, Henry | isbn 193108288X | isbn13 9781931082884 | asin 193108288X | num pages 713pp | avg rating 4.44 | num ratings 36 | date pub 1902 | date pub edition Feb 02, 2006 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Though I had this edition as my print text, I mostly listened to Juliet Stevenson's Audible. Personally I find James's late style very hard going and Though I had this edition as my print text, I mostly listened to Juliet Stevenson's Audible. Personally I find James's late style very hard going and often bring myself up short, wondering what I read for last ten minutes. Listening is great when one has lots of leisure, as on a road trip. The plot in The Wings of the Dove is a favorite with James: Old World sharpers scheme to take advantage of New World ingenue. Kate Croy a mid-twenties Englishwoman has been left in exigent straits by a reprobate father but enjoys the patronage of her wealthy Aunt Maude which gives her entree to upper class society. She is engaged to an ambitious but poor journalist Merton Densher. Milly Theale, a young American heiress with 'fabulous' and 'stupendous' wealth and no living close relations and in questionable health is travelling in Europe with her companion Suzy Stringham, who happens to be an old school-friend of Aunt Maud. They turn up on London and are taken up by Maude, who introduces Milly to her niece as well as to a vacuous aristocrat, Lord Mark. By coincidence, Densher also had become acquainted with Milly whilst on assignment in New York. With the idea that a Mediterranean climate would do Milly good, the four ladies travel to Venice and Densher follows. Figuring that Milly is not all that long for this world, Kate concocts the scheme that Densher will pretend to fall in love with Milly and become her heir, so that after Milly's demise Kate and he will share Milly's fortune as a couple. I found Kate very easy to fathom but Densher hard to 'make out' (one of his favourite expressions). I think it's a nautical idiom for being able to discern a ship or a headland through gloom or fog. Recently I read that James based him on the novelist Ford Maddox Ford. It would certainly be fun to discuss him in a literature class. The ending hints that he has acquired some principles, symbolized by his attending Christmas Mass at the Brompton Oratory (an extremely overdone imitation baroque Roman Catholic church). ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started Apr 03, 2025 | date read Apr 10, 2025 | date added Apr 10, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover NUNC! | title NUNC! | author Letts, Quentin | isbn 1408722844 | isbn13 9781408722848 | asin 1408722844 | num pages 272pp | avg rating 4.00 | num ratings 3 | date pub Apr 03, 2025 | date pub edition Apr 03, 2025 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Apr 03, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously | title Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously | author Pan, Jessica * | isbn 0857526154 | isbn13 9780857526151 | asin 0857526154 | num pages 368pp | avg rating 3.88 | num ratings 26,428 | date pub May 28, 2019 | date pub edition May 30, 2019 | Bill's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Apr 12, 2025 | date read Apr 23, 2025 | date added Mar 31, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover El Dorado Drive | title El Dorado Drive | author Abbott, Megan * | isbn 0593084969 | isbn13 9780593084960 | asin 0593084969 | num pages 368pp | avg rating 3.59 | num ratings 526 | date pub Jul 08, 2025 | date pub edition Jun 24, 2025 | Bill's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review It was only reading the afterword where Megan Abbott tells us about growing up with a big family in Michigan that the coincidence struck; the family n It was only reading the afterword where Megan Abbott tells us about growing up with a big family in Michigan that the coincidence struck; the family name of the sisters in El Dorado Drive is Bishop. But I very much doubt much of the detail is autobiographical. In this story Debra, Harper, and Pam are three sisters living in reduced circumstances, not in provincial Russia but in Gross Pointe. Their father was a big wheel in motor manufacture till he was fired when it collapsed in the face of foreign competition and the parents declined into alcoholism and death. The girls were Chi Omegas at the University of Michigan, apparently majoring in partying, lacrosse, and horses. Now in early middle age the eldest Debra’s husband Perry is a failed lawyer on chemo, the youngest Pam has seen her children cheated out of their trust fund by her sleazy ex Doug, and middle daughter Harper, a single lesbian, is barely getting by giving riding lessons at the Hunt Club where as children they had once been members. Heather is now lodging with Pam in a house with vinyl siding (tacky!) on the downscale street that gives this novel its title. And Harper has a guilty secret. She borrowed fifty thousand dollars from Doug (money that probably came from the college trust fund for her niece and nephews) to fee her lover Leigh’s lawyer in a child custody case like in Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (Leigh later dumped Harper to return to her husband and child). Harper’s bad luck apparently takes a happy turn when Pam introduces Harper to an unusual women’s support group called The Wheel. It provides more than emotional sustenance. The carefully selected invitees pay 5000tojoin,andwhentheirturncomesround,theyexpecta“gift”of5000 to join, and when their turn comes round, they expect a “gift” of 5000tojoin,andwhentheirturncomesround,theyexpecta“gift”of25.000. Of course, the faster the group grows, the sooner one is eligible for the “gift.” The word “pyramid” is forbidden. They are literally promised an exponential return on their investment, five squared, in weeks. Readers even minimally financially literate may wonder if any of these women took Econ 101 in college, because “The Wheel” is obviously a classic Ponzi scheme. (In the 18th-century William Hogarth chose a wheel to illustrate the South Sea Bubble.) But before we become too censorious of Abbott’s characters, consider how the American electorate responds to the prospect of reforming the Social Security system. And once they are in, the members trawl their friends, their clubs, and their churches for prospective recruits to add to the pot. Abbott doesn’t tell us what they’re thinking but one suspects that like voters who can do elementary math, they’re just hoping to get theirs before the bubble bursts.Abbott uses a specialized vocabulary to depict the world of these women, in which epithets and labels undergo bizarre metamorphosis: a Greyhound isn’t a dog, it’s a motorcoach, a “California king” isn’t a monarch, nor is a “Tudor”; the former is an item of furniture (as is a “built-in”), the latter a house, as is a “split-level” and a “ranch” as well as a “rental”; a lynx” isn’t a predatory feline, it’s an expensive coat one obtains in Windsor (I assume because the cat was trapped in Canada too), but you don’t wear a “Dutch warmblood”; you ride it. My favorites were “shearling mules”—after wondering where on earth you find fleecy equine crossbreds, I figured out these are supposed to be bedroom slippers. The sisters also recall labels from undergraduate days, when these women wore Tretorn and K-Swiss shoes. I remembered how Beth and Addy wore Puma shoes in Dare Me. It's appropriate; these middle-aged characters wish they were still teenagers living in a sorority house playing lacrosse for the Wolverines. The story takes place in 2009, though the great Obama General Motors bailout isn’t mentioned, nor much taking place in real grown-up world. As the narrator remarks, in their imaginations these women are living in a country where Dwight Eisenhower is still president. His cabinet included someone named Charlie Wilson, famous for declaring that “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Which explains the title of the novel. El Dorado isn’t the mythical South American city of gold. Rather it was the biggest most expensive and vulgar model of Cadillac in the tailfin era. There was a ‘50s movie titled “The Solid Gold Cadillac” actually. Now sister Pam is displaying her new status with a gold-colored Lexus. Of course. it’s leased -the sure sign of someone living beyond her means—but at least it’s a better-made car. (The great GM secret was that it cost only a few hundred dollars more to build a Cadillac than their despised el cheapo Chevrolet.)With Dare Me, Abbott gave us a principal character in Beth Cassidy who almost achieves tragic stature. The only other teen-aged athletes I’ve encountered who reach the same level are Lee in Heather Lewis’s House Rules and Thea Atwell in Anton DeSclafani’s Yonahlosssee Riding Camp for Girls. Perhaps not coincidentally, like Heather in this novel, they are equestrians. I think El Dorado Drive comes closer than any of Abbott’s subsequent books to equalling Dare Me. Unfortunately, there’s a streak of vulgarity in Abbott’s imagination (as we see in the television adaptation of Dare Me, which descended to the level of popular entertainment). But despite a contrived denouement owning more to accident than character, El Dorado Drive is a thoroughly engaging and often amusing story. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 3 | # times read 1 | date started Apr 24, 2025 | date read Apr 25, 2025 | date added Mar 25, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | |

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