Book 17 for 2025: “Songs for the Flames”, Juan Gabriel Vasquez


The characters in the eight stories of this collection are people touched by violence of one sort or another, reflective of the violence that has occurred in Colombia’s history. A photographer’s obsession for a woman with a traumatic past, a writer’s fascination with the history of a woman whose grave is outside the official cemetery, two people whose own personal shared histories meet at a grandiose ceremony pretending they do not know each other–are examples of all the tales of complexity found in life and how morals change over time. These are not stories for the faint of heart. They do reveal how traditions of the past harmed people in ways that do not occur today, how lies can catch up with the liar, and how often pretending to be someone you are not often fails.

Book 46 for 2024: “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez”, Claire Jiménez


The Puerto Rican Ramirez family lives on Staten Island. The book begins years after one of the three daughters, Ruthy, disappears at the age of 13 while on her way home after her school track practice. Twelve years later while watching TV, Jessica, the oldest daughter, sees someone on a reality show who looks like Ruthy. The woman on the TV has red hair like Ruthy and the same birthmark mole. Jessica tells her younger sister, Nina. They concoct a plot to go to the reality show site and bring Ruthy (if she is really Ruthy) home. They avoid telling their mother, Delores, who has never ceased struggling over Ruthy’s disappearance. Delores discovers their plot and insists on not only joining them, but also bringing her older Pentecostal friend who frequently falls into spiritual spells on the floor at church. Eventually, they all head to Boston where the show is located and all kinds of turmoil occurs.

The novel is told from the viewpoint of each sister and their mother, providing endless details about their Puerto Rican culture, their jobs, their views, and how they feel about each other, all done with dialogue. Sometimes it is loving, sometimes snarky as it deals with their experiences with racism, sexism, family secrets, and violence. As a reader, I, too, wanted to know what happened to Ruthy. Definitely worth the read.

An Abecedarian Poem for Sudan


While a lot of the world is focused on Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, since April 2023, two groups, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, have been fighting for control of Sudan. 11.1 million people are displaced and more than 17,000 killed, mostly civilians including children. Currently, for the second time since 2003, famine lurks at the door of Darfur state. Although I wrote the poem thinking about Sudan, a lot of the same conditions apply to Congo.

Amidst the denuded trees along a wide

boulevard walked a tall, dark-haired girl

carrying a large basket filled with a few

deep red pomegranates, two brown

eggs and three delicate pastries

filled with pineapple, cinnamon, and

guava, her favorite. She felt lucky.

Her mother sent her to the market, her mother

ill with ague, shivering, fevered,

jaundiced, too young to be dying, her father

killed in the endless wars which had

leveled so many cities and villages.

Men filled with the desire for revenge, for power,

never thinking how forgiveness and love could

overcome the endless devastation.

People plagued by angry men, men so

quick to condemn all not their tribe, their own,

retribution driving them week after week.

Some lay dying on the streets or dead as

the girl walked around their bodies

under the relentless, tropical sun.

Void of relief, fearful but determined, she

walked on toward the remains of her home.

Xenophobia once again stalked the streets,

young men brandishing assault rifles. Animals in the

zoo seem kinder, more caring.

Book 27 for 2024: “The New Naturals”, Gabriel Bump


Rio, a young Black woman, and her husband, Gibraltar, academics living in Boston, become concerned and disillusioned with their current lives. She finds an abandoned restaurant on top of a hill in western Massachusetts. Heartbroken after the death of her newborn, she is determined to create a safe, new, underground society beneath the restaurant. She finds a benefactor and her dream begins to take place. Via word of mouth, others hear about this safe place for the “lost” and disillusioned and head there. These include two homeless men from Chicago, a successful, young journalist, and a former soccer player.

Can such a society work? What happens if they run out of money? Regardless, can the care individuals have for each other save them?

Note: Depending on what kind of novels you prefer, this may or may not be a book for you. Several of the characters have serious mental issues, some think it is ok to resort to violence to save what they believe in and find ways to justify their actions, some seem very, very “lost”.

Book 21 for 2024: “The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu”, Tom Lin


If you like the unusual, violence, magic, revenge, stories of racism, classism, and Westerns, this is the book for you. Ming Tsu, a Chinese orphan at the time when the Chinese were building the railroad, is taken in by the head of a crime organization and taught to be an assassin. He falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a wealthy railroad magnate, elopes with her only to have her father (who has hired the crime organization to further his goals) kidnap her and force Ming Tsu into labor for the railroad. He eventually escapes, joins with a Chinese clairvoyant whom he calls the Prophet and a group of touring magic show performers, many of whom have supernatural abilities. He sets out to gain revenge, hunting down and killing all who helped his father-in-law kidnap Ada and put him in bondage. This is the classic Western romance, revenge story with a totally different twist and an unexpected ending.

Red Roses


He’s very good at wooing:

gifts–chocolate cherries,

red roses, delicate lingerie,

I love you.

He wears his mask well,

keeps calm, a handsome spider,

weaving a silken web.

She laughs, tells her friends

just how very special she’s

sure he is.

He wears this mask for months,

finds them the perfect apartment,

swimming pool, gym, marble,

granite, luxury appliances.

She’s sure he loves her:

the gifts, the perfect apartment,

fancy restaurants, luxury weekends.

She’s late, heavy traffic, an

emergency at work. He

screams, wants to know

why; no explanation matters.

He hits her for the first time, her

torso, knocks her down.

Tomorrow 24 red roses

arrive at work. He begs

forgiveness. She’s sure

he’s sorry; it won’t happen

again.

Two months later, she’s

late again. Real reasons he

does not want to hear. He

screams, he hits, he knocks

her down.

She dreads red roses.

Note: This is part of my writing a poem per day for National Poetry Month. Regarding this poem, 34% of female homicides are women who have been killed by intimate male partners. Often when women kill a man attacking them, they are convicted of murder even when trying to defend themselves.

Book 12 for 2024: “Quiet in Her Bones”, Nalini Singh


If you like murder mysteries, this is a book for you. I do not normally read them, found the blurb intriguing and started it. Once I started, I did want to know what happened. I learned a lot about New Zealand, the diversity of wealthy people who live there, and the lush climate in some places. A wealthy South Indian woman suddenly disappears along with 250,000 in cash. Ten years later no one still knows what happened to her and then suddenly someone finds her Jaguar hidden in dense woods with her skeleton in it. Her devoted son has believed all this time she ran away from a horrible marriage (he cannot stand his mean dad) and is still alive. Now the son is a famous, wealthy writer and determined to find out who killed her. This is the story of her life, a horrible marriage, a wealthy neighborhood where nothing seems as it really is, and the son’s quest to find who killed his mother.

Shootings


In Iowa

the governor says she’s praying

the senator says he’s praying

presidential candidates tell us to pray.

What?!

Oh, yes, I observe how well

that’s working.

82 school shootings last year,

39 dead, 89 wounded.

In US, death by gun is now primary

cause of demise for children and teens.

It’s not much better for the rest of us.

18,762 shot dead.

36,167 injured.

If you’re male, depressed, have a gun,

just shoot yourself.

Bang!

Thousands shot themselves.

I know some keep saying,

“People kill people, not guns.”

If you don’t have a gun,

you can’t shoot someone else

or yourself with one.

The most popular gun in the US?

An AR-15.

Think about that!

What does it tell

you about this country.

One Book a Week-54: “On A Night Of A Thousand Stars”, Andrea Yaryura Clark


For decades I have been a bit obsessed with Argentina and its history. When the horrible events described in this recent novel occurred during the military dictatorship in the 1970s, I closely watched news and read books about it. Later, I hosted an exchange student from Argentina and visited him and his family. Therefore, when I saw this novel on the new books shelf of the local library, I checked it out.

At a polo match in New York, a wealthy Argentinian diplomat and his wife and daughter meet a woman from his college days. She says things about him and his past that upset him and cause his daughter, Paloma, to wonder about her dad’s past, about which she knows little. When they go to Argentina on a trip related to his diplomatic duties, Paloma decides to investigate. She meets a local university student whose parents had disappeared (as thousands did) during the military dictatorship. He is part of an activist group searching into the disappearance of close family members during the dictatorship. He decides to help her with her research into her dad’s past. This creates a chain of events that upsets everything she knows and endangers her life.

If you want to read a heartbreaking love story, learn more about a brutal period in Argentinian history and some Argentinian customs and lore, this is the book for you. I went back and reread some of it twice.

One Book a Week-51: “The Watch”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya


I could not stop reading this book. The setting is a US military outpost during the Afghan war in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Kandahar. The weather is brutal–extremes of cold and heat, sand storms, heavy fog early in the mornings. Suddenly, after a brutal battle where they lose some soldiers, a young Afghan woman, Antigone, with stumps for legs shows up pulling a cart. Her brother, who the soldiers think was part of the Taliban, was killed in the battle; she wants her brother’s body for a proper Muslim burial. The soldiers do not know whether she is who she says she is or a suicide bomber. It confuses them even more when she plays hauntingly beautiful music on her rubab every night. All this leads to a lot of confusion over and raises many questions about morality and duty. Each chapter is from a different viewpoint, the young woman and various soldiers in the outpost.

Note: The rubab is a traditional Pashtun 12 string guitar-like instrument. You can find recordings on YouTube.