Reading in the Garden

A Book to Sink Your Teeth Into Swamplandia! by Karen Russell is about a family struggling to keep their business and each other together after their mother passes away.  The twist is that mom was the star attraction at Swamplandia! a daring alligator wrestling show on a small island off the Florida coast.  Top off their grief and financial famine with some major competition on the mainland and their fight seems to pull them down to an alligator death roll. I love this book! It was binge-worthy—difficult for me to set down.  The author entangles a smart and sophisticated writing style with bright, witty characters in a unique setting with an original plot. The 13-year-old narrator, Ava, drew me into their world of swimming with and wrestling alligators in a washed-up tourist trap where she’s hoping to fill her mother’s shoes.  In the meanwhile her sister is obsessed with ghosts, while her brother joins enemy forces, and the father leaves them to try and save...

Oddly Alluring You’ve probably seen the creepy cover of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.   It’s a black and white image of a spooky looking little girl who’s actually levitating off the ground.  It reminded me of A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne which had a double dose of disturbing girls on the cover, and was an eerie, suspenseful book.  I really liked it. But Miss Peregrine’s was nothing like A Dark Dividing and was equally as good in a completely different kind of way.  This book is about sixteen-year-old Jacob who sets out on a journey of discovery after his grandfather dies under mysterious circumstances.  Before taking his last breath, Grandpa Portman sputters out some clues to his fatal injuries, clues that tie into stories, fairy tales that Grandpa had been telling Jacob since he was a small child.  Jacob determines to solve the enigma and eventually ends up on an island in Wales where he finds his way to Miss Pe...

The Austrian Mona Lisa The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor is a fascinating account of a painting, the artist who created this masterpiece, and the family it belonged to.  It’s about the Nazi theft of the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and the fight to get it back to the family years later.  History telling at its finest, this historical novel effortlessly moves along exploring the events and people who were involved in the journey of this extraordinary painting of a Viennese high-society woman elegantly wrapped in dazzling gold leaf on canvas by Gustav Klimt. This book was informative and riveting.  I practically held my Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 1912 breath in horror and suspense almost the entire section on WWII. I found myself biting my nails as the fates of the family and friends of the Bloch-Bauers were revealed.  Knowing about the lives and times of the people in a painting as well as the owners brought art appreciation to the next level.  ...

Determination and Danger in a Desert Tracks: A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson is a memoir about one woman’s amazing nine-month journey with four camels across the inhospitable outback of Australia. What surprised me in this riveting account was the time and dedication it took just to prepare for this long and arduous adventure.  The process of learning, saving money, and preparing for such a mass undertaking took pure dogged determination and tireless work.  In a powerfully expressive narrative, Robyn relays the skills and tenacity that pull her through an extremely harsh environment where flies swarm by the thousands and scorpions, millipedes, and snakes slither around while she sleeps.  Along the way she reveals the eye-opening plight of the aborigines—their living conditions, racial hatred, health problems, and suppression. Both compassionate and tough-as-nails Robyn deals with sick camels, pesky journalists, as well ...

A Marriage Adrift at Sea Log of the SS The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford.  Ever want to get away from it all, get off the grid in a remote cabin in Alaska, or maybe retire and travel in an RV for years, or perhaps sail on the open sea, forever leave the hassles and complications of everyday life behind?  Well, this novella may make you think twice about such a dream. In the Log of the SS The Mrs Unguentine , a woman recounts her life at sea with her husband—a crazy, abusive alcoholic who rarely spoke to her.  Mrs Unguentine was literally trapped in her marriage out at sea for over forty years. It was more like a slow-moving nightmare for her.  Loneliness was her biggest complaint on a converted garbage barge where tending to her massive gardens was her duty and comfort, where her husband preferred to communicate via notes rather than talk, where time seemed to slowly eat at their sanity.  I found this brief one-hundred-and-seven-...