The Glass Ocean

Though the ocean might have been like glass, the disturbance that came under the ocean was horrific.  This is a story based on the sinking of the Lusitania.  The Glass Ocean is a collaboration of three wonderful authors, Beatriz Williams, Lisa Wingate, and Karen White.  

I am not sure how much of this story is really based on fact, but the authors did say they referenced Erik Larson's Dead Wake when writing this novel. This is a fictionalized interpretation of that fateful journey.

In this novel we follow the story of Caroline Hochstetter and her inattentive husband, Gilbert as they board the ship for its ill-fated trip across the ocean from NYC to Liverpool.  Also on that boat is an old friend of Caroline's, Robert Langford, who has loved her for years.  There are three German spies caught as the ship sets sail and locked in the brig.  Word has it on board there could be more people willing to sabotage the trip for the German cause.  Gilbert has a treasured manuscript he is carrying to Britain, and he has many secret business meetings while on board.  Left to her own devices, Caroline, hurt and angry at her husband's abandonment, turns to Robert for comfort.  Two other women play an important part in this novel,  Ginny and Tess, sisters who are also on board for their own nefarious reasons.

To learn about the past we meet Sarah Blake, a young novelist who had a big bestseller, and now is looking for her next great novel.  The opening scene with her attending a book discussion group who have read her book for their monthly meeting is so well written and funny.  But she really needs a good story to write, so she takes a box out of the closet and discovers a relative that was on the Lusitania and starts to do her do diligence.  Her research leads her to England and the newly disgraced John Langford.  

Together they set out uncover what happened on that fateful trip across the ocean.

This is an entertaining romance both past and present that makes for fun reading.  You are definitely making guesses as you read of how you think it will turn out at the end and there are twists and turns that make you change your mind along the way, so that there was a surprise for me when I got to the end of the book.  

After reading Dead Wake myself, I do recognize some of the facts that were mentioned, but maybe some creative license was taken to create this story.

Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour Bookstore

 I have wanted to read this book for quite some time, but it always slipped to the bottom of my to read pile as new books kept coming out... So glad my book group picked it for this month's selection.  What a fun book.  It is entertaining and enjoyable for a quiet afternoon.  A perfect read for a bibliophile, or someone interested in the Fountain of Youth... a modern day version of searching for that Holy Grail that will help you live forever.  The descriptions of the characters that frequent the 24 hour bookstore are wonderful.  

This is the story of a young man who is out of work and out of ideas.  He was an online marketing director of a small bagel business that goes out of business.  He has been designing the advertisements.  Now he is unemployed in San Fransisco wondering what to do next with no real career path and no job prospects he walks into a small book shop with an advertisement int he window.

Hired by the odd little gentleman, for the overnight shift, he is unsure what kind of bookstore looks so cluttered and has no current bestsellers on the shelves. Also he is asked to write a detailed description of the customers who come in to exchange books wrapped in brown paper.  

As time goes by he becomes intrigued with the clients who frequent the shop late at night, they are an eccentric bunch.  He brings on his friends and a new hopeful relationship with a girl he meets from Google to help him discover the secrets of the bookstore.

His discoveries lead his group to uncover bigger secrets and threatened to change the world of all those who are faithful followers of Mr, Penumbra.

This book was much more entertaining than I thought it would turn out to be.  Even though there is a bit of fantasy and science fiction to the story I was enthralled to the very end.

The Mystery of Alice

 The Mystery of Alice, by Lee Bacon

I listened to this audio book and it is very cleverly written.  It is written as an audio diary of this young girl named Emily who is unhappy in her public school.  She is being bullied .  She gets an invitation to take a test and apply for a scholarship for an elite private school and she passes and goes off to the special school.  She meets her roommate who also is a scholarship student, Alice.  Then the mystery begins, Alice disappears.  Emily walks around recording her surroundings and conversations and also her own thoughts.  So you are listening to her in real time.  It is very well done because you also hear street noise as she is walking around the city, horns, other people passing her talking.  Good middle school story plot.

Though this is a clever technique for writing I am not sure how realistic it is.  Maybe by being so extreme that these plans can not really happen, it is readable with an important message but not real enough for others to imitate.  The message is clear bullying is not appropriate, funny or nice.  It is a serious offence.

Pages and Co. The Bookwanders

 This is the first book in a series of Pages and Co. novels written by Anna James.  The Bookwanders explains it all.  There is something special about reading a good book.  It is like you fall into the pages of the story and can get lost in the plot and become friends with the characters.  These days it is a wonderful way to escape from the reality of your living room or bedroom and felling like you have traveled somewhere else.

That is exactly what this book explores.  What would happen if this were not just your imagination that carries you away but you really could leave where you physically are and travel into the book you are reading.  Tilly Pages lives with her grandfather and grandmother following the disappearance of her mother when she was a baby, in the bookstore they run.  Now at the grand old age of ten, she is a lonely child who finds comfort in the books she loves.  Her favorite characters are Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland.  

One day those characters come alive and visit her in the bookstore.  She then begins to notice some other interesting visitors her grandparents are entertaining and when she and her new friend Oskar are pulled into the book in Green Gables with Anne they begin to learn what is the secret of the Pages bookstore and book traveling.  

Fun for kids who love books and even an adult who loves to read and imagine this could happen to them.

Exile Music

Music to my ears!  This is a beautiful symphonic novel written by Jennifer Steil, taking the reader through the lives a family who escapes the Holocaust to Bolivia in South America.  Again we are exposed to another piece of history that has not been exposed before. 

Divided into the movements in musical work of art, this novel follows the Zingel family from Vienna as Hitler is coming to power and then taking over Austria, in the slow moving first movement at a largo pace.   Told from the point of view of Orly the youngest member of the Zingel family,  born into a musical family in Vienna, living in a building owned by her grandparents, she from birth, is best friends with the upstairs neighbor, Annalise.  Though the parents are not close they all share the building and watching over the two girls.   But the differences become more apparent as the Nazi party comes into power and eventually the Night of Broken Glass changes everything.  

As Orly's parents, her father a violist with the Symphony and her mother, a treasured opera singer, realize that their music and popularity will not save them, they prepare to take their family out of Austria.  Leaving behind her older brother, Willi who will escape through the underground, they finally book passage to Bolivia, as Steil takes us into a crescendo building up to the boat passage out of Austria and their introduction to life in Bolivia.  Life was hard for the displaced Jews who were able to escape there during the war.  So the next section of the musical piece is more of an agitated pace, quickly changing direction as they jump from a full life of connection to a life of confusion, loss of language, loss of familiar foods and traditions.  

Orly has an easier time of adjusting than her parents and she embraces the new language and lifestyle. We follow her life as the years go by and she grows from a ten year old child to an adult woman.  So many incredible encounters and hardships happen to this family.  They all have to deal with the hard lifestyle of the mountains of Bolivia, foreign language, altitude sickness, different culture and finally the Nazis they were trying to escape.  All these experiences are representative of what really happened to people who went to South America.  Steil spent years interviewing the remaining survivors and their descendants to share their real life stories in this novel.   So this is a great book to read, to learn about a different perspective about a time and place in history.  

So now we have come to the conclusion of this powerful piece of literature and our musical concert. The tempo reaches its ending with a mezzo-forte, moderately loud passage, though it is still restrained in style.  Because exile can mean so many things.  Exile from your home, exile from your culture, exile from your friends.  Orly works to triumph over the tragedies of being exiled in so many ways.