May Reading List

You might think that with our self-isolating I would be reading more, not less. Only four books read this month. The first two for which I dipped back into my own stash.

Smilla's Sense Of Snow by Peter Hoeg - If I read this award winning book back in the 90's when it was new and very popular, I don't remember anything about it. Smilla is a half inuit Greenlander living in Denmark. When her six-year-old neighbor is killed in what is ruled an accidental fall from a building, she does not believe it was an accident and begins her own investigation.
There are so many beautiful passages in this book. That, along with the mystery and development of characters, kept me reading even through the technical stuff. But the last line describes the book succinctly: "There will be no resolution." Having books end without a tying up of loose ends is okay sometimes and not okay others, probably because part of the time I can imagine an ending myself while other times I want the author to do it for me.

eat cake by Jeanne Ray was a book recommended by my daughter years ago. It is impossible to read without wanting to try out at least some of the included cake recipes. Or, if you are like me, wishing you still had your mom around to make the cake for you. (Not surprising since the heroine's name is Ruth, same as my mom's.)
Ruth's answer for everything is to bake a cake: crisis: bake a cake; celebration: bake a cake. When she isn't baking, she is thinking about possible variations for her cake recipes. So, when her husband loses his job and her parents move in with them and her teenage daughter is acting up, what does she do? Bakes cakes. Eventually the whole family gets involved and their cake baking business saves the day.
This is an easy, fun read and even though I am a 'pie' person, not a cake lover, I still thought how good a piece of coconut cake or strawberry cream cake would taste.

In my previous post I wrote about learning to download books through the library's 'Bridges' program. Loving Eleanor by Susan Wittig Albert was the first book I downloaded. I have been a fan of this author since reading all the books in her China Bayles Herbal Mystery series.
Loving Eleanor is a fictional interpretation about the intimate friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and AP writer Lorena Hickok. I was/am a big fan of Eleanor's. She was an amazing woman.
This is a passage from the book: "But wasn't that the way of love? Never going the way you would think, or hope, setting its own pace, its own direction, taking you and your heart with it as far as you could go. And then farther, and then farther still, past all hope, all fear, all comprehension."
I really liked this book.

lethal white is Robert Galbraith's fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series. I remember when the first book, The Cuckoo's Calling, came out and Robert Galbraith was soon unmasked as a nom de plume of J.K. Rowling's. Knowing that didn't make me want to read the book any more or less. I never read all the Harry Potter books, but, being a mystery lover, I did read the first book by Galbraith and the second and the third. This fourth one cements my intention to read all that he writes. I am hooked on Cormoran* and his partner, Robin Ellacott.

(*Cormoran is such an unusual name I finally looked it up and found its Cornish origin very interesting. #JackandtheBeanstalk)