The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot Book 4) by Agatha Christie *****

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Dr. James Sheppard received a call summoning him to Fernly Park, where Roger Ackroyd had been murdered. Flora Ackroyd hires Hercule Poirot. Dr. Sheppard and Poirot investigate the murder together. Money, blackmail, family secrets. One of Christie’s best.

Agatha Christie’s great-grandson wrote that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was important because it showed that she had “the audacity to rip up the rule book and test the boundaries.” Along with Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None, she challenged the reader’s assumptions. This is a meta-mystery, where the interactions between Agatha Christie and the reader overshadow any between Hercule Poirot and the suspects.

Roger Ackroyd is murdered with a rare Tunisian dagger from his silver table, a display case containing “one or two pieces of old silver, a baby shoe belonging to King Charles the First, some Chinese jade figures, and quite a number of African implements and curios.” Poirot works to determine the time of death and the location of the people known to be present: Mrs Cecil Ackroyd – widow of Roger's brother Cecil, Miss Flora Ackroyd – Ackroyd's niece & Cecil's daughter, Major Hector Blunt – Ackroyd's friend & a guest of the household, Geoffrey Raymond – Ackroyd's personal secretary, Captain Ralph Paton – Ackroyd's stepson from his late wife's previous marriage, John Parker – Ackroyd's butler, and Elizabeth Russell – Ackroyd's housekeeper

Roger Akroyd leaves the largest share of his estate to Ralph Paton. The housekeeper receives 1,000 pounds. Flora receives 20,000 pounds. Mrs. Ackroyd receives a lifetime income. All these bequests suggest motives for Roger’s murder. Ralph is engaged to Flora, but the investigation discovered that he is secretly married to Ursula Bourne, Ackroyd's parlor maid.

Before Roger’s murder, Mrs Ferrars committed suicide because she was being blackmailed.

In the end, Poirot uncovers the actual murderer.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Angels Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery, Book 2) by Alice Duncan *****

 Angels Flight by Alice Duncan *****

1920s. Mercy Allcutt (not Alcott) moved to L A to escape her straight-laced Bostonian family. She was happy as P I Ernie Templeton’s secretary until her mother showed up. Over the objections of her mother and her boss, she investigates two murders.

Her proper, upper-class mother objects to Mercy working. “You’re taking a job away from someone who needs it.” Regardless, when her boss refuses to help Francis Easthope, whose mother is being scammed by a couple of spiritualists, Mercy takes the case and attends the séance where gossip columnist Hedda Heartwood is murdered. Her boss and Detective Phillip Bigelow warn her away from the case, but she persists.

Throughout the book, her mother and the men try to guide her away from danger and independence. “You’d probably be a dead duck right now,” Ernie growled. “I would not be a dead duck, Ernest Templeton! I saved myself from being shot by being quick and resourceful, curse you! You sure as anything didn’t rescue me! I was already rescued!”

There are plenty of historical references, such as candlestick phones, drop waist dresses, the death of Rudolph Valentino, and the scandal with Fatty Arbuckle. The plot concerns the movie industry (the flickers), actresses being discovered, sexual harassment, and “blue movies.”

The title refers to the historic narrow-gauge funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of Downtown Los Angeles, California.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess *****

The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic

The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic is a memoir about the Bosnian War, 1992-1995. Amra was sixteen when the war started. Her Muslim town of Bihać was placed under siege. Family, education, and her cat helped her survive. A young-adult story of courage and humanity. Five stars.

Amra is a Bosniak, a Bosnian Muslim. “[The Serbs] hate us, they think we are subhuman. Months ago, their leader, Radovan Karadžić, already threatened we would be eradicated.” However, in Amra city, Bihać, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims had been friends. Amra's best friend was Olivera, a Serb. One day, for no obvious reason, Olivera stopped talking to Amra. Next, all the Serbs evacuated Bihać. Soon, bombs and rockets rained down on the city. That is how the war started.

Later, a list was found naming all the Muslims. The men would be killed, and the women would be taken to rape camps. Fortunately, the city defended itself. What could have been a genocide became a siege.

The Serbs fight for land, for ideology. We fight for our lives. They are careful and want to survive this war. We know if they take our city, we are dead, so we fight with everything we have—with guns we take from them. With our hands. With our teeth if we have to. They fight to win. We fight to the death. So they trap us here, bombing us, demoralizing us. Starving us. Now both sides have hunkered down for a long standoff. My little cat is the only thing that ever brings light to my eyes. Every day Maci stays near me, curled up patiently at my side, waiting for me to take an interest in life again.

This is a YA book written to show that Muslims are not terrorists, the importance of education, and the horrors of hatred.

There are so many parallels between my experience of surviving the war in Bosnia and what many are going through right now, in the United States and all over the world. [2020]

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer ****

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer ****

Braiding Sweetgrass is an ambitious collection of essays that explores the intersection of ecology, climate change, and Native American traditions, combining scientific research with indigenous perspectives. Be prepared to be educated and inspired by pecans, strawberries, and maple syrup.

Caveat

The book is long and repetitive. One way to deal with this is to skip any essays that do not pique your interest. Alternatively, skip this book entirely and read Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Some excerpts

Pecan mast fruiting metaphor/teaching

What we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual. Stick together, act as one. We Pecans have learned that there is strength in unity, that the lone individual can be picked off as easily as the tree that has fruited out of season.

Strawberry metaphor/gift

I was raised by strawberries, fields of them. Not to exclude the maples, hemlocks, white pines, goldenrod, asters, violets, and mosses of upstate New York, but it was the wild strawberries, beneath dewy leaves on an almost-summer morning, who gave me my sense of the world, my place in it. Behind our house were miles of old hay fields divided by stone walls, long abandoned from farming but not yet grown up to forest. Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery—as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.

Gifts vs commodities

But what if those very same socks, red and gray striped, were knitted by my grandmother and given to me as a gift? That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild, I’ll wear them when she visits even if I don’t like them. When it’s her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return. (Very codependent.)

Something is broken when the food comes on a styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft. If the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”Reciprocity.”

Why is anthropomorphism a problem? It shouldn’t be.

Another student countered Andy’s argument. “But we can’t say he or she. That would be anthropomorphism.” They are well-schooled biologists who have been instructed, in no uncertain terms, never to ascribe human characteristics to a study object, to another species. It’s a cardinal sin that leads to a loss of objectivity. Carla pointed out that “it’s also disrespectful to the animals. We shouldn’t project our perceptions onto them. They have their own ways—they’re not just people in furry costumes.” Andy countered, “But just because we don’t think of them as humans doesn’t mean they aren’t beings. Isn’t it even more disrespectful to assume that we’re the only species that counts as ‘persons’?” The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.

Ice is pure water and a very efficient way to take the water out of the sap

When I returned in the morning, I found the sap in the garbage can frozen hard. As I got the fire going again, I remembered something I had heard about how our ancestors made maple sugar. The ice on the surface was pure water, so I cracked it and threw it on the ground like a broken window.

The Thanksgiving Address and the power gratitude

Imagine raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority. Freida Jacques works at the Onondaga Nation School. She is a clan mother, the school-community liaison, and a generous teacher. She explains to me that the Thanksgiving Address embodies the Onondaga relationship with the world. Each part of Creation is thanked in turn for fulfilling its Creator-given duty to the others. “It reminds you every day that you have enough,” she says. “More than enough. Everything needed to sustain life is already here. When we do this, every day, it leads us to an outlook of contentment and respect for all of Creation.” It’s such a simple thing, but we all know the power of gratitude to incite a cycle of reciprocity. If my girls run out the door with lunch in hand without a “Thanks, Mama!” I confess I get to feeling a tad miserly with my time and energy. But when I get a hug of appreciation, I want to stay up late to bake cookies for tomorrow’s lunch bag. We know that appreciation begets abundance. Why should it not be so for Mother Earth, who packs us a lunch every single day?

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences by Jedidiah Jenkins ***

 Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey by Jedidiah Jenkins 

A codependency cautionary tale. The author takes extraordinary, but unsuccessful, measures to gain his mother’s approval. His mother listens to conservative talk radio and evangelical Christian preachers. She lives in Tennessee and is unvaccinated. He lives in California, and is vaccinated and gay. They take a road trip where they reminisce, and he tries to convince her to accept his sexuality. As with many codependent relationships, neither person changes.

The author is approaching forty, and his mother is in her seventies. He is single. Throughout this book, he is concerned about whether his mother will attend his wedding and approve of the man he chooses to marry. I found it interesting that little energy was invested in the question, “Why hasn’t he found that man?”

Much of the book reminisces about his parents. His father, Peter Jenkins, and his mother, Barbara Jo Pennell, were minor celebrities in 1978, when they walked from New Orleans to Florence, Oregon. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins was published in 1979. Jedidiah was born after the walk in 1982. His parents divorced in 1987.

A codependent person typically prioritizes the needs and well-being of others over their own, often at the expense of their own self-esteem and happiness. He asserts, “There are pillars of what a child wants from their parent, which are to be loved, to be liked, and to be approved of.” This could also be a definition of codependency.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki *****

The Full Moon Coffee Shop

When your life has taken a wrong turn, where do you go? The Full Moon Coffee Shop. How do you find it? It finds you. What should you order? You can’t. The cats will bring desserts and drinks selected just for you, consult your horoscope, and reveal where your path has deviated from your true self. “Who knows—maybe it’s all a dream.”

Warning: The author describes this as “a book about astrology.” Welcome back to the 1970s and The Age of Aquarius.

“After graduating from university, [Mizuki Serikawa] became a substitute primary-school teacher. The scriptwriting work felt like a side hustle, a hangover from [her] student days.” However, her scripts were very successful. After years as a “hitmaker,” she lost touch and her fancy apartment with expensive furnishings. She made ends meet by writing scripts for side characters for video games. Her only friend was Jiro, the gay hair stylist.

Akari Nakayama was a director who remembered Mizuki’s time as a hitmaker. She arranged a meeting with Mizuki to turn down her latest submission, and … She forgot to tell Mizuki that she remembered her from primary school. Mizuki led Akari’s walk-to-school group.

Satsuki Ayukawa was a popular, cute/kawaii actress until the tabloids reported that she had an affair with a married man. Akari broke the news to her that this was the end of her career. Satsuki was also in the walk-to-school group.

Takashi Muzimoto hired Mizuki to write scripts for his video game. He was also in the walk-to-school group. When the old man who played piano died, he found foster homes for the man’s cats.

Megumi Hayakawa, also in the walk-to-school group, left her hair stylist job and ended up with Jiro.

All these people were intertwined, and the horoscope-reading cats at the Full Moon Coffee Shop set them all straight through the use of astrology.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack *****

The End of Everything

The stuff of planet Earth constitutes 5% of the universe. The rest is dark energy and dark matter. If physics has left you behind, Katie (despite what the records might say, the fire was not my fault) Mack will catch you up with her readable and enjoyable book, The End of Everything. For example, “The 2D surface is a saddle shape (or, if you don’t have a saddle handy, you can use a Pringles chip),” or “If we need weirdness in physics, we can always rely on the quantum realm to serve us up something good.” Her physics is more fun than you remember.

Some memorable quotes:

“It means I have to learn a lot about everything, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun.”

“The fundamental incompatibility of our theories of the very massive and the very small is one of the things that hints at the direction we should go in creating new, more complete theories. But it is also rather inconvenient when we’re trying to explain the very early universe.”

“If you zoom in to a small enough scale, do space and time act like discrete particles, or perhaps waves that interfere with each other? Are there wormholes? Are there dragons??? We have no idea.”

“And, to be clear, it’s not that we necessarily can explain everything from the Planck Time on, but that we currently definitely cannot explain anything before it.”

“I have a moral objection to the word quadrillion.”

As a bonus, Dr. Katie Mack (BS Caltech, PhD Princeton) mentions several notable female and POC physicists and astronomers, including: Nima Arkani-Hamed, Freya Blekman, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Ruth Gregory, Anna Ijjas, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Hiranya Peiris, and Vera Rubin. Surprisingly, she omits Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

The book ends with a quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “But that means the whole point is that you understand it, and then you enjoy it, and then… ‘so long and thanks for all the fish.’ Cool.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong ***

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong...

 is a letter by first-generation Vietnamese American, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother, Rose. They live with his grandmother, her mother, Lan, meaning orchid. He describes himself as a “queer yellow faggot.” The family lives surrounded by poverty and drugs. “To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”

Little Dog is writing about his life from the perspective of his twenty-eight years. On one hand, he escaped his childhood poverty to attend college. “I, the first in our family to go to college, squandered it on a degree in English.” On the other hand, he is surrounded by death. His teen lover, Trevor, dies from an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl at the age of 22. His grandmother died of bone cancer, not diagnosed until it was stage four, and death was imminent.

His mother worked in a nail salon where the hours were long, the chemicals dangerous, and she had to constantly demean herself for tips. “In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I’m here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable.”

The book includes vivid scenes of Little Dog’s sex life with Trevor, drug use, and life during the Vietnam War. The writing is poetic, but, for me, that wasn’t enough to balance the brutality and abuse. Depressing.

What genre does this book fit into? The author acknowledges the English Department at Brooklyn College for teaching him, “that rules are merely tendencies, not truths, and genre borders only as real as our imaginations small.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Dakota Nights by Debbie Macomber *****

Dakota Nights by Debbie Macomber. Powerful women. Passionate kisses. This book is a G-rated romance with pregnancies, dangerous secrets, multi-generational families, and holidays. It celebrates small towns and small farmers. If you want love at first sight that lives happily ever after, this is your book.

Dakota Nights is a compendium of two novels, Always Dakota and Buffalo Valley. Buffalo Valley follows Always Dakota and is half its length. Since Buffalo Valley refers extensively to Always Dakota, it is best to read them together, with Always Dakota first.

Always Dakota is a story of four relationships.

Margaret Clemens was innocent and rich. Matt Eilers had a reputation and was dating a cocktail waitress, Sheryl Decker. Regardless, Margaret wanted to marry Matt. She was the opposite of seductive, feminine Sheryl. As far as [her father] knew, she’d only worn a dress twice in her entire life. He’d tried to get her into one when she was ten and the attempt had damn near killed him. But, as everyone said, “Margaret’s Margaret.” She got Matt, but Sheryl wouldn’t let him go.

Calla hated her mother, Sarah, for divorcing her father, Willie Stern, and marrying Dennis. To make matters worse, Sarah and Dennis were having a baby. Calla punished her mother by going to live with Willie in Minneapolis, who proved to be a worse parent than anything Calla had imagined.

Merrily kidnapped Axel from his abusive parents, who were preparing to sell him to pedophiles. She lived in fear that she would be discovered. Her husband, Buffalo Bob, convinced her to turn herself in. As a result, the authorities in California took custody of Axel, she faced the possibility of jail time, and they had to apply to adopt Axel against California parents who didn’t have criminal records like Bob and Merrily in North Dakota.

Rachel started a quilting business in Buffalo Valley with a bank loan. She would accept a marriage proposal from bank president Heath until she paid off her loan.

Buffalo Valley.

Vaughn Kyle’s girlfriend Natalie was an executive and mega-retailer, Value-X, and had her eye on Buffalo Valley for the next store. “Buffalo Valley doesn’t have enough retail choices.” When she learned Vaughn had relatives in the area, she sent him to collect intelligence. In Buffalo Valley, “he met Carrie, and the attraction between them was undeniable.” With Carrie, he learned about small towns…Christmas tree lighting, cookie exchanges, and neighbors working together to overcome adversity.

“So you want to give me your heart?” she said

“Don’t you know?” he asked her.

“Know what?”

“You already have it.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

South Breaks by Hannah Steenbock *****

South Breaks by Hannah Steenbock. “South was tired. They were on the first journey of her life, and the last.” It was her time.  “She had to die… to protect the Holy Empire.“ But South didn’t die. Instead, she learned that she had powers and that everything she believed was a lie. A novel about family, bravery, and justice.

“She must be the only Rabbit still alive... Her beloved Moon had been the first of them to go… Moon had already been tied down onto the sacrificial half orb on top of the Moon Pyramid when she made love to him for the last time.”

After escaping from the priests and learning about the Empire’s evil, the priests stole her niece, Shani. Along with her brother Goha, South had to rescue Shani from the Empire before Shani was sacrificed at the top of the Moon pyramid.

Her quest required her to uncover and accept her powers.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Blockchain Killing by Robert J Muller *****

In The Blockchain Killing by Robert J Muller, Alec Chenais is a hacker torn between three forces. He works at 1Weaklink, a startup that is developing a toolset to break blockchain privacy for the NSA. Elliot Perry is a Silicon Valley billionaire who helped to elect Trump and wants to hack blockchain to rule the world. Ludivine is based in Paris and wants the 1Weaklink code for her own purposes. When Alec’s girlfriend, Aamna Jaffrey or AJ, and the better coder of the pair, is murdered, Alec abandons coding to seek revenge. An international technothriller of coding, murder, and money.

AJ is from Pakistan, and her parents expected her to marry to benefit the family business. When her mother introduces her to the man, “Aamna, this is Farazman Syed. He is to be your husband. And this is the matchmaker, Begum Rabia Safdar,” her response is, “Fuck you, you silly buffoon.” She escapes to MIT.

When Elliot Perry realized that he was up against the NSA, he moved his efforts onto the 222-meter mega-yacht "Mugwump" in international waters.

Alec is up against the NSA, Perry, and Ludivine. They all have unlimited financial, hacking, and murderous resources.

Alec’s mother is Mary Bethune Chenais. Mary McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist, founder of Bethune-Cookman University. A wonderful biography of Mary Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt can be found in The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. https://1book42day.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-first-ladies-by-marie-benedict-and.html

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The First Last Concert by Dee Lorraine *****

In The First Last Concert by Dee Lorraine, Victoria Robbins is a black woman of faith and ambition in a world of powerful men – a corrupt politician, a tormented entertainer, and a retired boxer. Throughout this, she doesn’t lose her faith or her goal to be an award-winning writer. Her quest takes her to NYC, Paris, and Kuala Lumpur. Not even the COVID-19 lockdown can stop her. An inspirational story.

Her first challenge is as a speech writer for Senator Harkenbrook, where she is introduced to the darker side of political organizations and campaign financing.

Next, she works for “Killer” Cain Foxworth, the retired boxer and NYC publisher who never wants to hear “No” from anyone who works for him.

Her third job is a publicist for jazz pianist Zechariah bin Shukri, who is tortured by the lack of performing opportunities during COVID-19 and trauma in his past. She manages this job with her writing and envelopes of $100 bills.

Throughout this, she draws on her faith to keep pushing herself and others forward.

A surprising character is “The magnificent black [97 key] Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Concert Grand piano.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher *****

A Wizard's Guide on Amazon

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher opens when Mona discovers a dead body in her aunt’s bakery. Someone is killing magic people. As wizards go, Mona is the bottom of the barrel. She turns yeast and flour into tasty bread. Regardless, aided by Bob, the sourdough starter, she saves the city. “Siege. Sorcery. Sourdough.”

Mona can solve many missteps during the baking process. “You don’t want to knead them too much, or it makes them tough. I stuck a floury hand in the dough and suggested that maybe it didn’t want to be tough. There was a sort of fizziness around my fingers and the dough went a little stickier. Dough is very amicable to persuasion if you know how to ask it right. Sometimes I forget that other people can’t do it.”

Mona’s magic was often helpful. “As we passed the surly Jorges, I glanced down at his lunch, which was black bread and cheese. You’re feeling really dry, I suggested to the bread. Really stale. Hard as a rock…as long as I can see it, I can work with it. It wants to go stale. Bread is very accommodating that way.”

Her friend Knackering Molly could animate dead horses. Don’t ask. Read the book.

Some quotes:

“It is nearly impossible to be sad when eating a blueberry muffin. I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific fact.”

We met each other’s eyes, and then we both looked away. After a minute, I said, “I never wanted to be a hero.” His face was solemn. “Nobody ever does.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill *****

On April 25, 1955, 642,987 American women became dragons. Thus began When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill, a satirical feminist fable against McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, prejudice, and the patriarchy. An optimistic vision of a future where strong women take charge and make a difference. A book for 2025. My most enjoyable read of the year.

One might imagine that large, flying, fire-breathing, bullet-proof dragons (“and no fewer than 1,246 confirmed cases of philandering husbands extracted from the embrace of their mistresses and devoured on the spot”) might make life easy, but this book is not that simplistic. The “dragonings” didn’t include everyone, and those left behind when their mother, daughter, or friend transformed had many complicated feelings of grief and abandonment to work through.

The main character is Alex Green. “When Women Were Dragons Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green—Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still Human. A memoir, of sorts.” Her aunt Marla dragoned. Her mother died of cancer. Her father abandoned her to remarry and then died. She was responsible for her young cousin, Beatrice. Her best friend, Sonja, also dragoned. Her primary supporter was Mrs. Gyzinska.

Mrs. Helen Gyzinska, librarian, philanthropist, and influencer (“became head librarian and chief commissioner for the county system when she was only twenty-four years old, and maintained the library’s excellence until the day she died”). She stood up to McCarthy and the House Unamerican Activities Committee. “All I know is that we all just spent a lot of damn time learning nothing of consequence, except what it feels like to get your ass handed to you by a goddamned librarian. ... It turned out that the librarian in question was the single largest funder of her own library’s system, and managed a high-yield endowment that would keep the organization not only flush with cash but wealthy enough that it regularly handed generous grants to other, more needy districts. She was, it seemed, untouchable. She faced no penalties and served no time. She simply returned to her library.” “I hear even J. Edgar Hoover is scared of her.”

Alex’s mother was a mathematician who studied knot theory and crocheted magical knots.

The conservatives opposed transformed dragons (like LGBTQ+ people).

NOTABLE QUOTES…

“We were old enough to know that the posters warning of reefer madness were fully bogus and that there were plenty of girls who went parking with boys in cars and still maintained their grade-point averages and their status in school. There were a lot of falsehoods in this world, and it seemed a large percentage of them were posted in hallways and announced on the school’s PA system. I tuned them out.”

“There is no greater moment for a scientist than to be proved wrong or to be alive at a time when settled science is turned on its head.”

Mr. Burrows. “He … kept a basket of yarn and crochet hooks at his desk. He did experiments making hyperbolic planes and Möbius loops and topographical conundrums and something called a snark and various three-dimensional approximations of four-dimensional objects.”

Alex Green. “My name written in scripty letters. Highest honors. Despite the loss of my mother. Despite my father’s abandonment and abdication. Despite raising an irascible little girl all alone. Despite the deep wound of grief. Despite everything.”

“He had one blurry photograph of a woman halfway through her dragoning. Her hands were clouds. Her dress hung in strips. There was a look of fierce joy on her face.”

The author is from Minnesota.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Baboon Metaphysics & Other Minds ****

Baboon Metaphysics and Others Minds both explore the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. Baboon Metaphysics compares humans with baboons (common ancestors 60 million years ago), while Other Minds compares humans with cephalopods (common ancestors 300 million years ago). The cephalopods (octopus & squid) represent convergent evolution where distantly related organisms evolve similar traits, while the baboons represent an insight into the development of language. Two books well worth reading.

“[Octopuses] are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. … This is probably the closest we will ever come to meeting an intelligent alien.” Only three groups of animals have “complex active bodies (CABs). Those groups are arthropods, vertebrates, and one group of mollusks, the cephalopods.” An octopus has as many neurons as a dog.

Baboons represent a step on the way to humans. They cannot speak and do not have a theory of mind, but they understand complex communications and societies. The book puts forth the interesting hypothesis that receiving/understanding language came before the generation of language and theory of mind.

The first step in the generation of language was a theory of mind. We had to understand that others had different information and understanding than we did (theory of mind). That led to the desire to explain and to teach, and then to deceive.

Two books on different inflection points in evolution.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Razorblade Tears by S A Cosby *****

Razorblade Tears: Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee are old ex-cons when their sons, a gay black and white couple with a baby daughter, are brutally murdered. While they both rebuked their sons in life, they team up to do what the police cannot or will not do: bring their sons' killers to justice. In a plot with twists and turns, their quest starts with a motorcycle club but goes way beyond that. The two men confront their prejudices toward their sons and each other. Cosby is a brilliant new author. Reads his novel of vengeance and love.

The two old guys quickly track down the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club. However, nothing is that straightforward in this book. “One of them pulled the trigger, but somebody else gave the word,” Ike said. In a situation that is repeated, Grayson, president of the motorcycle club “figured six Rare Breed with guns was more than enough for a nigger and a shitkicker.” Of course, Grayson was mistaken.

In between taking vengeance on the bad guys, Ike and Buddy Lee deal with their guilt for not accepting their sons while they were alive, not loving their granddaughter, and their own racial prejudices. The quest for vengeance and redemption alternates with direct talk against bigotry and for love.

 He needed your love then. Not now that he’s in the ground,” Mya said. Tears rolled down her face.

Ike shook his head. If Isiah were here, he would tell him there was nothing to get. Love is love. But Isiah wasn’t here. He was dead.

S A Cosby is just getting started. I expect more from him for years to come.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray *****

The First Ladies is a novel about the interracial friendship between Eleanor Delano Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune during the years of FDR’s presidency and Jim Crow. Together, they fought for civil rights. Some fights were successful (the Tuskegee Airmen), and others not (any anti-lynching bill). This book is not all politics. Their relationship and mutual support are also explored.

Much is said about how people are addressed. White people addressed negroes by their first name regardless of their relationship. This was offensive, and Mrs. Bethune spoke up about this, often supported by Mrs. Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt might not need an introduction, but Mrs. Bethune does. “She was also a prolific writer who submitted articles and pieces to many newspapers and periodicals, and had regular columns. … The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the National Council of Negro Women benefited from Mary’s leadership ... The list of businesses that Mary originated and ran was numerous—McLeod Hospital, an insurance company, Bethune Beach, a funeral home … During World War II, Mary was also a consultant to the U.S. Secretary of War, helping to identify and select Negro female candidates to become officers.” In addition, she held several leadership positions within FDR’s administration. Bethune-Cookman University is still in Daytona Beach, Florida.

With its emphasis on these women’s personal lives, the book deals with FDR’s affair with Lucy Mercer and Eleanor Roosevelt’s affair with Lorena Hickok. It also deals with Mrs. Bethune’s experiences with Jim Crow laws. My favorite parts of the book were when Eleanor used her power as First Lady to combat Jim Crow laws.

J Edgar Hoover, Bull Connor, and Lyndon Baines Johnson, among others, had cameo roles.

Footnote: The two authors are an interracial pair and consider many of the discussions of racism between Eleanor and Mary to be autobiographical.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

James by Percival Everett *****

Percival Everett’s James started with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. He made runaway slave Jim the main character. Like all slaves, James is bilingual. He can speak the dialect (“slave talk”) Twain wrote for Jim (“a language no white person could master”), and the language of the whites. Black people use “slave talk” whenever there are white folk present. Jim is the smartest person in the book, but that doesn’t shield him from the brutality of slavery. James exposes how slavery fostered violence and ignorance.

Here is a language lesson…

You’re walking down the street and you see that Mrs. Holiday’s kitchen is on fire. She’s standing in her yard, her back to her house, unaware. How do you tell her?” “Fire, fire,” January said. “Direct. And that’s almost correct,” I said. The youngest of them, lean and tall five-year-old Rachel, said, “Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.” “Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?” Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.” “And why is that?” I asked. February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.” “Good, good. You all are really sharp today.”

James was self-educated. He read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke.

The power of reading…

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

Quotes…

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

“A distance you know is shorter den one you don’t.”

“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher ****

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher. Cordelia tells her story of breaking away from her evil sorceress mother Evangeline. The unhappy family lives in Little Haws. Cordelia’s only friends are their horse, Falada, and a neighbor girl, Ellen. Evangeline’s hope for Cordelia is for Cordelia to marry a rich man, but first, she needs money to fund Cordelia’s coming out and her season in London. As Evangeline points out, “The problem with being rich is that you simply have no idea how expensive it is to be poor.” To that end, they leave Little Haws so Evangeline can enchant and marry Squire Samuel. His sister, Hester, foresees problems and refers to Evangeline as Doom.

Cordelia does her best not to upset her mother because when she does, Evangeline makes her obedient. When Cordelia is obedient her mother controls her (body, voice, etc.) except for her eyes. After arriving at the Squire’s manor, Cordelia learns that Ellen’s father, Edward Parker, is in jail for murdering his family with an axe and that Falada is not her friend but is her mother’s familiar.

“A rich man, she’d always said. Not a young man.”

“Madam.” He frowned at her. “I am a butler. Do you truly believe that I do not know how to dispatch a houseguest if required?”

In the end, Cordelia et al defeat her mother and all live happily ever after. No surprise twists here.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty *****

 Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty is the story of three dysfunctional kindergarten families, single mother Jane whose son Ziggy has been accused of being a bully, rich and beautiful Celeste, mother of the twins Josh and Max, who lives with domestic violence, and Madeline and Ed who have a daughter, Chloe. Madeline’s ex-husband Nathan has a kindergarten daughter, Skye, with his second wife Bonnie. Between bullying, domestic violence, and divorced parents, the kindergarten class at Pirriwee Public School has more than its share of problems. This book is a masterpiece around the themes of bullying and domestic violence. Moriarty combines the many plot threads with the skill of a master weaver. The result is easy to follow and comes together beautifully in the end.

Jane has moved to Pirriwee Beach with her son Ziggy. On Kindergarten orientation day, Ziggy is accused of being a bully. He denies it, but Jane is worried that he might have inherited sadistic tendencies from his father, an uncomfortable one-night stand with an abusive guy when Jane was nineteen.

Celeste is rich and beautiful. We rarely see her husband who travels extensively. The smallest thing can set him off, but he is careful never to leave marks that may be seen in public. After each attack, he is most attentive and affectionate. She believes that his attacks are her fault. 

Madeline and her ex-husband Nathan compete over their fourteen-year-old daughter Abigail. Abigail chooses to move in with Nathan and Bonnie. Abi takes Boonie’s sensibilities (vegan, yoga, Amnesty International) and goes further. Her website is: www.buymyvirginitytostopchildmarriageandsexslavery.com.

The author supports the idea that adult abusers/bullies are irredeemable, but cheaters are not. The book toys with nature/nurture causes for abusers/bullies without declaring a side.

Other families:

Harper and Graeme have a daughter, Emily.

Renata’s daughter is Amabella, “not Annabella. It’s French. We didn’t make it up.” She has a French nanny, Juliette. Amabella was bullied on orientation day and blamed Ziggy. Renata started a petition to have Ziggy suspended. Husband Geoff.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon ****

 Outlander by Diana Gabaldon begins in 1945 in Scotland when Claire touches two standing stones and is transported to 1743. The good news is that she meets her love, Jamie, and they have fantastic adventures. The bad news is that 1743 is a time of violence and sadomasochism. The book alternates between romance and torture. Even skimming through the most horrific scenes, I found the book hard to finish and I do not intend to read the next eight books in the series.

Claire is the Outlander. She finds herself among the Scottish Highland clans and passes herself off as English. Jamie calls her Sassenach which is a derogatory word for English, but which becomes a term of affection.

Claire is a strong main character who stands up for herself fighting all manner of men and beasts. Unfortunately, she is unable to prevent the over-the-top brutality that makes the book an uncomfortable and difficult read.Claire was a WWII combat nurse. She put her medical knowledge to work in 1743 by identifying beneficial plants and shunning the use of leeches. In addition to medicine, the book is packed with historical details.

550 pages. The next book is over 950!

The book includes a token discussion of the risks of time travel and changing the future. Nothing new or interesting.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros *****

Are you discouraged? Read The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros! Follow the love stories of Scarlett & Jameson in WWII England plus Georgia & Noah in contemporary Colorado. Beyond these two romances, there is love for granddaughters, sisters, and so much more. The book is like a warm shower, fuzzy blanket, and hot cocoa of love. (Don’t you love mixed metaphors?) I guarantee this book will chase away your blues, if only for a while.

This book is written in three parts. There are chapters set in WWII England, contemporary Colorado, and letters exchanged by Scarlett and Jameson during WWII. The chapters are interspersed, and the letters appear at the beginning of most chapters. That might seem confusing, but it isn’t. Sometimes the letters or the Colorado chapters are spoilers for the WWII timeline, but the book isn’t a mystery, it is a story of love.

Did I say, the book isn’t a mystery? The ending is a big surprise. Just when you think the author couldn’t have packed more love into 400-plus pages, the ending reveals even more.

While most of the people in this book are lovely, there are a few baddies. (1) Georgia’s mother, Eva, can’t resist abusive husbands. She abandons Georgia to be raised by her great-grandmother, Gran Scarlett. After WWII Scarlett became a famous romance author. (2) Georgia fears she is following in her mother’s footsteps when she marries and divorces Damien, definitely a baddie. Then, (3) there are Scarlett’s parents who want to marry her off to the abusive Henry Wadsworth to cash in on their titles.

The central conflict is about Scarlett’s first book which was left unfinished when she died. Eva wants the money from this book and offers it to a publisher and a movie producer. The publisher assigns the writing to Noah Harrison (a writer both Georgia and her Gran despise). The movie producer is Georgias’s ex-husband. Fortunately, Gran left the control to Georgia. It is more complicated than this, but you get the point. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

Scarlett and her sister Constance are WAAF officers who work in the top-secret Filter Rooms. As the BBC explains: “The Filter Room was the nerve center of the Radar system. It received information from the many Radar stations... This information, needed to be instantly corrected, coordinated, and displayed on a huge map table…, in a form suitable to be passed on to the Operations Rooms. Without this essential link, the Radar information at that time could not have been used.” Once again, the world depended on women to perform calculations in the absence of computers. Whoever thought women weren’t naturals for STEM occupations! The women often had higher ranks and security clearances than the pilots. For more fascinating information: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/53/a2093753.shtml

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

A Shimmer of Red (Odessa Jones #3) by Valerie Wilson Wesley ****

In A Shimmer of Red by Valerie Wilson Wesley, Odessa Jones works for Risko Realty and owns D&D Delights, a catering company she started with her deceased husband, Darryl. Risko Realty’s competition is the wealthy Delbarton Realty owned by Emily (Dickenson) Delbarton and he crazy brother Edgar (Allan Poe) Delbarton. In a coup, Risko recruits salespeople Anna Lee and Bella Mondavi from Delbarton. Shortly after the transfer Anna is killed in a hit-and-run while jogging. Odessa's psychic gift tells her this was murder. “With great power comes great responsibility—Uncle Ben to Peter Parker.” Now she must track down the culprit.

Anna worked at BUNS, a gentlemen’s club, where Edgar became infatuated with her because she was Annabel Lee and he was named after Edgar Allan Poe. He recruited her to Delbarton Realty against the wishes of his sister Emily who owned Delbarton Realty, BUNS, and much more. After her death, he sent so many flowers to Risko Realty. Was this grief or guilt?

Odessa’s boyfriend Terrence, who left her at the alter when she was twenty, more than twenty years ago, returned. He was near death and explained that he could marry Odessa when he learned he had a daughter Rosalie. Rosalie and Terrence are both successful. Odesa is torn between resentment for his betrayal and empathy for his eminent death.

Odessa spends more time on family conflicts than solving the murder, but she does solve the murder in the end.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez *****

TAKE THE INVISIBLE WOMEN CHALLENGE. Men need to read this book by Caroline Criado Perez. It will change your worldview. Women can skip it because they live it every day. With the subtitle, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, the author shows (with 70 pages of references) the subtle and egregious ways bias against women plays out in daily life, work, product design, medicine, and politics. While you might imagine a familiarity with these topics, the author presents them with details and evidence that will surprise every reader. This book should be required for everyone. Three hundred pages to a new you.

The book introduces a few important concepts…

Default Male: This concept is seen throughout society. Drugs are tested, diseases are studied, cars are designed, laws are made, economies are measured… all with the default male in mind. Thus, women die and are disadvantaged. Examples? Crash dummies are male. GDP doesn’t include women’s caring and homemaking work. Doctors don’t recognize women’s symptoms. Houses built after disasters lack kitchens.

Data Disaggregation: Most research aggregates data for men and women (usually a minority or not included). In this way, sex differences are lost.

Quotas: From the workplace to medical research to product design to politics, requirements to consider/include women always result in more qualified people and better products. Said another way: Quotas do not make spaces for less qualified women. They bring in more qualified women and drive out less qualified men!

Chapter 1: Can Snow-Clearing be Sexist? The city of Karlskoga, Sweden, first cleared the snow from the streets and then from the sidewalks. When they reversed this, hospital admissions decreased – predominantly pedestrians, and predominantly women. “The original snow-clearing schedule in Karlskoga hadn’t been deliberately designed to benefit men at the expense of women. Like many of the examples in this book, it resulted from a gender data gap – in this instance, a gap in perspective. The men (and it would have been men) who originally devised the schedule knew how they traveled, and they designed it around their needs. They didn’t deliberately set out to exclude women. They just didn’t think about them.”

TAKE THE CHALLENGE!

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst *****

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. Keila is a librarian. “It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more.” “If there was anything in the world, she was good at, it was research.” “Are you ever lonely? How can I be? I have books.” Her companion is Caz, a sentient spider plant. “When the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated the emperor,” she escaped the capital with five crates of books. How will she survive with a “growing list of useful skills she didn’t possess?” The author says, “I want to write a book that reads like drinking hot chocolate.” She succeeded.

Keila has sequestered herself in the Great Library of Alyssium. Power and prosperity in the Crescent Islands Empire have been concentrated among the elite…until the revolutionaries depose the emperor and burn down the library, she escapes with five crates of books to Caltrey, an outer island where she was born. Once there, she makes friends.

This book includes magic spells, mermaids, merhorses, unicorns, and cloud bears. Keila’s first friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz. She plans to support herself with “Keila and Caz’s Jam Shop” selling jam and magical spells on the side. This doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.

SARAH BETH DURST is the author of more than twenty-five fantasy books for adults, teens, and kids.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations. 

The Women by Kristin Hannah *****

The Women by Kristin Hannah might be titled The Women Who Served in Vietnam. If you recall, the Vietnam War was a difficult time for the United States, especially for the returning veterans. This book mixes Vietnam-era music, clothes, and protests in the United States with the military life in Vietnam. April 30, 2025, is the golden anniversary of the end of that war and now is a good time to revisit that period. I was not in the military, but I vividly recall the time. I highly recommend this review of the war.

The book follows Frankie McGrath, a 20-year-old woman from a well-to-do, conservative family on Coronado Island in San Diego, as she enlists as an Army nurse and ships out to Vietnam (1966). The book's first half is about her two tours in-country (The 36^th Evacuation Hospital on the coast outside of Saigon and the 71^st Mobile Army Surgical Hospital [MASH] in the jungle near the Cambodian border). The second half follows Frankie’s difficulties returning with PTSD and a common misconception that there “were no women in Vietnam.”

The author presents a balanced view of the period.

The book includes “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” along for war injuries, deaths, suicide, and PSTD. Don’t expect a happy ending or easy answers.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations.