What I Read -- The Invisible Life of Addie Larue

For some reason, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue has made me realize something about myself, and my reading choices.  I've read several books which are largely based in reality but have an element of the fantastic, a tiny bit of magical realism.  Among them are commercial successes (Game of Thrones, Outlander, the Harry Potter, Eclipse, and Inkheart series), less-popular literary titles (Forever, Winter's Tale, The Snow Child, The Night Circus, The Time Traveler's Wife), and classics (Dracula and Kindred).  And right now I'm working on Shark Heart, which is another one. 

If you follow those links, you'll see I've been reading books like this for years.  But for some reason this book made it click for me that I like that fantastical element of a story.  Why?  I'm still not sure.  My working theory is that it changes the rules just enough to keep things interesting. 

In The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, the magical plot hook is the main character's wish - granted by the devil himself - to live forever.  What he curses her with is that, though she will live forever, no one she meets will remember her.  Every day, every time someone re-enters a room, she has to start all over with them.  

That sort of forgetableness becomes exhausting to Addie over the centuries (and leads to a certain amount of moral flexibility, however necessary it may be) ... until one day, someone remembers her.  Just as she begins enjoying having a friend and lover with whom she can build a real life, she discovers that he has a secret too. 

An all-around sweet story about love and sacrifice. 

Paris in the Present Tense -- Take 2

I have read a few Mark Helprin books before, mostly because Mom gave them to me.  I don't know that I would have gravitated to him independently.  For one, I'm a slow reader and his books tend to be lengthy.  Also, of the books of his that I've read, some of them have an element of the fantastic in them.  Although I am realizing that I like this (more on this soon), it is a fact that previously surprised me about myself, so I probably would not have picked up many of his books for that reason.

Paris in the Present Tense isn't magical, but Helprin's description of people is.  That is something he does incredibly well.  

Paris centers on the long life of cellist Jules Lacour.  He never really made it as a musician due to his debilitating stage fright, but has a respectable career as a music professor.  He also is a rower (not the only character of Mark Helprin's who is) who takes pride in his fitness despite being in his 70s.  His life hasn't been the same since the death of his beloved wife, but he dotes on his daughter and grandson; the latter is ill with leukemia and in desperate need of expensive treatments the family cannot afford.

Everything is thrown into stark relief when Jules finds himself defending a victim of some thugs on the street, and accordingly the subject of a police investigation.  As they are closing in, he stays true to himself while choreographing his own last symphony.

What I Read -- The Wife, The Maid, and the Mistress

S and I took a trip to Ireland a couple of Christmases ago, where I learned an intriguing little bit about Grace O'Malley, a clan leader and pirate who controlled the western Irish coastline in a way no other woman ever has.  I haven't forgotten about her since, and have wanted to do some more research to learn about her life.  

Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that there is a recently-published novelization of her life.  It was written by Ariel Lawhon, and she was on a book tour which included a stop at the SLCL.  My friend M and I went to her talk. She was smart and funny and I was completely taken, but unfortunately the waiting list for her Grace O'Malley book, The Pirate Queen, was long.  Many of her other books are also based on real-life characters, novelized. 

While waiting for The Pirate Queen to become available from the library, I grabbed another of Lawhon's books, The Wife, The Maid, and the Mistress. It's the story of the disappearance and death of New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Crater, and the police detective who is on the trail. This is where the make-believe comes in: Crater's body was never found and, though there are a lot of strong theories, the murder was never solved.  It makes for a great fill-in-your-own-blanks opportunity for a novelist.

While my interest was piqued by Grace O'Malley, if yours is piqued by Crater's disappearance, there are two books written about it: Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind and The Empty Robe: The Story of the Disappearance of Judge Crater. These are both mentioned in an author's note (read by the author herself) at the conclusion of the book, which also includes a reasonably thorough recounting of what parts of her story were completely her own creations.  

If you're interested in the audio version, the narrator of the audiobook generally did a pretty nice job with the different voices and accents.

What I Read -- London Falling

Another recommendation from K while we were wandering Wonderland Books was London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. 

It's the story of a young man who jumped to his death on the bank of the Thames from a fifth floor balcony.  To the family, it didn't see like that was the whole story.  After receiving inadequate responses from Scotland Yard about their investigation (or lack thereof), they enlisted the assistance of an investigative journalist to look into their son's death and the shady characters he was spending time with in the months leading up to it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it started to look like there was more to the story.  What perplexed everyone, though, was that there was security footage of the man jumping from the balcony.  He was alone, so an argument that he was murdered didn't make a lot of sense.

If you're into true crime, police procedurals, and the like, this is a good listen (I did the audio version read by the author, which I  enjoy when it's well done - which this was).

What I Read -- The Nordic Theory of Everything

The most recent installment of my 2026 Reading Challenge was The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen.  

It was not exactly the book that I expected. Beginning with chapter 1, "The Nordic Theory of Love," it is more a book about government and social policy - especially policies designed to fund and subsidize individuals at various stages of life - than it is a book about individual psychology, which is what I expected. Specifically on the subject of families and children, the author argues that, since Nordic countries provide more robust support for parental leave, child care, and return-to-work policies for parents, parents - even single ones - are much more likely to be productive, working members of society.

In general, the concept is that if you have happy, healthy, well-supported, self-sufficient (albeit with government assistance) individuals, they will be able to form relationships on equal footing, with neither person in a position of subservience to the other. The knowledge that the other doesn't necessarily need them, but rather is choosing them, encourages spouses to behave better with each other.  As a consequence, the relationships they have will be stronger and better grounded.  

There is some sense to that, but I'm not sure I followed it all the way to the conclusion.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book.  It's read by Abby Craden, and the accents are horrendous.  It was pretty unenjoyable to listen to. 

What I Read -- The Gales of November

My latest "available now" audiobook selection was The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It is, as it sounds, an investigation into the causes of the wreck of the famous ship on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.

As with much of the start of the Challenger, my previous read, the early part of the book is dedicated to the personal stories of the people involved: the executives at the shipping companies, Master Captain Ernest McSorley, the 28 other men aboard the ship (and one who had a narrow miss), and their families.  As with Challenger, it probably could have used a bit of editing but I though it was better done in this book because the call-backs to this information were better tied in at the end. 

Also loaded up - which I loved - was a history of the shipping industry on the Great Lakes, including shipped materials (in the case of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it was taconite iron ore), ship construction, weather, and winds.

Much in the nature of The Perfect Storm (the story of the wreck of a fishing boat off the coast of Nova Scotia) and so many similar stories, it was a series of small decisions - probably none of which alone would have individually caused a catastrophe - that added up in ways that were impossible to predict, leading to tragic results. 

I wonder how much any of us would know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald if not for the famous song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot?  (Fun fact about the song: the released version was the first take.  Not the first take in the recording studio, but the first time the band had ever heard the full song all the way through, let alone joined in to play!) 

Lots of ships have gone down in the Great Lakes, many of whose names are nearly forgotten and whose stories are long-since lost, but we all remember the Edmund Fitzgerald.  A substantial portion near the end of the book and the epilogue are dedicated to the story of Lightfoot's song's writing and release, and the the ongoing annual reunions held by the family members and descendants of the men who died when she went down.  The story is kept alive by the younger generations; one of the granddaughters has a tattoo on her forearm of the last words ever dispatched over the ship's radio: "We are holding our own."

What I'm Reading Now -- Shark Heart

K's latest choice for our postal book club read is Shark Heart, by Emily Habeck.  

What I know so far is that Wren and Lewis are one year into their marriage when Lewis is diagnosed with a rare disorder which causes him to, gradually, turn into a great white shark. 

How do they cope with that?  The next 330 pages will reveal all! 

What I Read -- Challenger (and a bit about the Francis Scott Key Bridge)

When K and I were in the DC area recently, we popped into Wonderland Books in Bethesda on a rainy morning.  K, who is a teacher and so perhaps was not surprisingly plagued by the story of the Challenger explosion, which took the life of Christa McAuliffe, the first and only participant in the Teacher in Space Project, pointed out the book Challenger to me.

Not long after that, it came up as one of the available audio books in my library app, so I grabbed it and gave it a listen. 

The beginning of the book is a little slow.  We spend a lot of time meeting various administrators who were involved with the program at NASA, employees of the subcontractors, the astronauts, and their families.  Much of that comes back later, but it could have used a bit more editing. 

The rubber really meets the road in about the last quarter of the book.  The disaster has occurred, the investigation is underway.  And man, are the results of it horrifying.  I'll avoid providing too much detail, but the combination of learning about what the astronauts likely went through and learning that the cause of the disaster was known and ignored is simply appalling.

It's also a good reminder that the small things can sometimes have a huge impact.  Remember a couple years back when that cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore?  Well, the NTSB has now issued the findings from their investigation.  The long and short of what they determined is that the ship lost power because a wire came loose in one of the many circuit breaker boxes.  The break in that circuit caused the system to believe that the engine cooling water level was low.  With that particular engine, the low cooling water warning causes the engine to shut down, which is why the ship lost propulsion and steering, and why it subsequently crashed into the bridge.  But what is the reason that the wire came loose?  Because the label that was affixed to it at the breaker box was affixed in the wrong place along the wire, which meant that it didn't quite seat properly, which allowed it to shake loose with all the engine vibration.  There is a great video animation of what went wrong here. 

Wild, right?  

Six people died, the ship and its cargo were damaged or lost, economic losses due to limited access to the Port of Baltimore for the 11 weeks following the crash are estimated at $1.2 billion, and bridge replacement costs are estimated to be $5 billion.  All because one label was glued to one wire in the wrong place. 

What I'm Reading Now -- A Guide to the Good Life

After some semi-existential frustrations in the last couple of years (mostly career-related), I've begun reading a bit about Stoic philosophy.  My current investigation is via A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, by William B. Irvine.

I actually started out looking for a different book on Stoicism, but this one was available at my library, so I decided to grab it instead.  I'm about 40 pages in as I write this, and so far I like the concept: an investigation of Stoic principles together with their practical application to everyday life.

As I get a little farther along, I'll see if that concept holds up.  

What I'm Reading Now -- We Do the Damndest Things

As is tradition, I picked a book to read when we headed out west last month.  We were going to be in and out of Jackson, so I selected We Do the Damndest Things, by Gaspari "Gap" Pucci.  

Mr. Pucci, of Italian heritage (as you might have guessed), left behind his family in Pennsylvania to relocate to Wyoming after discovering the great wide open via Army postings during the Cold War. He fell in love with the area, and with his wife, Peggy, and they made their lives on a small ranch outside of Jackson.

The book is a miscellaneous collection of his memories and stories.  We're back from Jackson now and I haven't finished it yet, but I hope to keep plugging away at it in between my other reads.