October Challenge

 

# a book by an author who is dead

The Cat Who Could read Backwards ( Cat Who mystery #1)

Author: Lilian Jackson Braun

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Page number: 250

First published: 1966

Setting: Midwest in the US

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: Jim Qwilleran, whose name had confounded typesetters and proofreaders for two decades, arrived fifteen minutes early for his appointment with the managing editor of the Daily Fluxion.

One sentence comment: Braun’s writing style is my favorite, for almost every sentence she had written took me by surprise.

     While I was reading the book, I couldn’t believe that the book was published almost sixty years ago. It read as if it was published in recent years, and the language is so refleshing. I’m not a pet lover but the vivid description of the cat intrigues and delights me. No wonder the series is still in the backlist as popular paperbacks.

 

 # a book in which a character mourns the loss of another

Murder on Marble Row (Gaslight Mystery #6)

Author: Victoria Thompson

Genre: historical mystery

Page number: 313

First published: 2004

Setting: New York in the late 19^th century

Rating: 5 stars

First sentence: Frank didn’t actually heard the explosion that morning.

One sentence comment: The author always has the gift of using an intriguing opening to remind us of the protagonist’s complicated relationship with the heroine, which is the major spark of the series.

     In this book, Thompson tackles the issue of anarchists bombing. What’s really exciting is that Theodore Roosevelt, then Commissioner in the police force, appeared and assigned the investigation to the protagonist, Frank. The author has a great talent to mingle a serious issue with romantic relationship. The interaction between the leading characters, Frank and Sarah, is getting more and more interesting as the book series develop. It will be a shame if I miss one of the books in the middle of the series. Frank’s thoughts about women, including Sarah, are considered sexsual discrimination but was his era’s common sense so I always read with a chuckle. I am reminded of the controversial statements that one of our recent presidential candidates made about women in Taiwan. For example, he referred to a young woman in a governmental position as ‘pretty enough to be a receptionist.’ I’m thinking perhaps there is not much difference between the late 19^th century and the present time.

     Besides linking issues relating to our time, the greatest talent of the author is to make the protagonist, Frank, adorable, even though he is a typical representative in patriarchy. I sympathize him because men’s traditional role in a conservative society was crumbling as more women started to take professional responsibilities in the American society. However the integrity of a traditional role he had held still shone on him, and for this reason we accept him as who he was.

 

# a book with a “death” word in the title

Puzzled to Death ( Puzzle Lady Mystery #3)

Author: Parnell Hall

Genre: cozy mystery

Page number: 391

First published: 2001

Setting: Near Boston present time

Rating: stars: 4 stars

First sentence: Cora Felton pulled the heavy knit sweater around her shoulders, crinkled her nose, squinted her eye against the sun, and declared: “I. Hate, Fall.”

One sentence comment: It is a marvel to connect a crossword tournament and a domestic murder.

     With the series progressing, I can see both the murder design and conversations are getting better from the crossword guru writer, Hall.  I also detect scarcasm where the fake puzzle lady, who is interested in muder investigation is to some degree an illiterate in the eyes of the real puzzle constructer in the story. I have enjoyed the murder series but can hardly do much to the puzzles the author offered in the plot. Fortunately, knowledge of the puzzles is not intrinsic for solving the murders.

 

# a book with a white cover

Revolutionary Road

Author: Richard Yates

Genre: fiction

Page number: 463

First published: 1961

Setting: a village at western Connecticut in 1955

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.

One sentence comment: It seems that women of either types, single-willed or constantly nagging, are horror to the author.

     I bought this book more than ten years ago, but wasn’t impressed by reading it. At present this is the only English book with a white cover in my TBR, so I decided to reread it.

The story is set at the time when a woman had the luxury of being a housewife and getting her husband’s support to attend a performing group to manifest her ambition. At first, I felt out of place, having nothing to link with the characters thus lost my interests. In Taiwan, our society has never been so rich either in material or in spirit that ordinary working people have the ability to pursue art as an integral part of life. While I see the narrator living in heaven, he states that his people “take the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs.” However, when I kept reading, I resumed curiosity by appreciating the author’s delicate language and understanding that every era or place has its problems for us to trace.