Murder She Baked

When I first started reading Joanne Fluke’s series a few years ago, I had no idea it was being adapted into mystery movies. Imagine my delight in discovering that our HULU live subscription (obtained to watch sports) includes offerings from the Hallmark Channel. You might say a little something for everyone, including my teenage son who is just as likely to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie as he is a football game. Until the Christmas romance watching commences, I’ve been biding my time with the Hannah Swenson mysteries, some of which can be found under the title Murder She Baked. While true to the characters, the movies do change the perpetrators from the books, so no spoil alerts needed if you are watching after reading.

If you do want to read before you watch, this is a post I wrote about the books in 2016.

In the murder mystery series by Fluke, Hannah Swenson owns a bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. However, in between baking the next day’s batch of cookies or catering her mother’s Regency Romance club, she has a nasty habit of stumbling upon dead bodies.

Comfort food for the serial reader, this series is predictable in plot (find a body, eat chocolate, go behind boyfriend detective’s back to interview suspects, make a cake, get trapped in a small space with the killer, eat more chocolate).  Swensen’s obsession with new recipes (helpfully printed at the end of each chapter) and the dilemma of which suitor to marry - detective or dentist - is quaintly old-fashioned, in our age of Instagram and Tinder. Also, comforting, once you’re hooked, is knowing that there are 17 or 18 more to read.

And recipes involving double or triple chocolate to try.

"I should have known better than to let myself get swept away"

When a movie comes out on a streaming service we don’t have, I look to see if it was based on a book. So when I saw this trailer, I was excited to find Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen. If you enjoy this one and the second, Loveboat Reunion, you’ll be thrilled to know  Loveboat Forever comes out next week.

In the first book, it’s the end of senior year for Ever Wong. She’s been accepted to a pre-med program at Northwestern. Her parents are ecstatic. Little do they know she’s been secretly applying to dance programs. And little does she know they’ve signed her up for an intensive language and culture program for the summer in Taiwan. In the program, she meets Xavier, the son of a mogul, who would rather be drawing than aspiring to run a company. Other key players (pun intended) are cousins Rick and Sophie. Rick becomes one of Ever’s love interests and Sophie discovers her prowess at social connections can be put to good, after she admittedly does some evil  

Fans of Crazy Rich Asians will find some familiar tropes - social media exchanges, extravagant parties, people who own private jets, and matchmaking schemes. Wen provides plenty of teen angst, over the top drama, and will they/won’t they moments to keep the plot moving.

Turns out they almost always will.

"What if pretending to enjoy life is the same as actually enjoying it?"

My reading interests lately have ranged from romance to historical fiction to social commentary. And of course sprinkled in are the lighthearted murder mysteries (if such a thing isn’t an oxymoron) as they become available on my holds list.  

End of Story by Kylie Scott

Winterland by Rae Meadows

Summer Stage by Meg Mitchell Moore

The Trackers by Charles Frazier

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club series)

“it sliced right through me”

When poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with cancer, he knew he believed in something, but “what,” he writes, “was considerably less clear.” His book My Bright Abyss is a collection of ruminations on faith, belief, love, death, and grief.

As a poet, he often includes excerpts from his own writing along with stanzas from both lesser and well known poets and theologians. As someone in my book club aptly observed, this “complicates” things. But reading this book wasn’t meant to be a simple matter of sitting down and opening it. His musings and interweaving of other writings makes you pause, think, reread, take notes, reread, and breathe.

As a recent episode of this show proposes, some things are meant to be savored. This book is one of them.

“Christ is God crying I am here, and here not only in what exalts and completes and uplifts you, but here in what appalls, offends, and degrades you, here in what activates and exacerbates all that you would call not-God.”

Amway

There’s a moment in her appearance at Seattle Arts and Lectures where Ann Patchett describes the Peter Dukes of her twenties (Peter Duke is a character from her new novel).  And she charms the audience by describing how one young man charmed her by pretending to sell Amway. Later in the conversation with Melinda French Gates, Gates makes reference to Amway and Patchett says, “That’s going to be your take away?!” 

My take-away is going to be the fabulous list of recommendations she peppers throughout her interview. And of course I’ll be anxiously awaiting my own copy of Tom Lake arriving from Elliott Bay Book Company, a bonus perk of supporting SAL.

 

Ann Patchett recommends….

Monsters by Claire Dederer

Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch

Swing Time and The Fraud by Zadie Smith

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

James by Percival Everett

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Absolution by Alice McDermott

Fool for Love by Sam Shephard

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Checkhov

Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

The Orchid Thief and The Library Book and On Animals by Susan Orlean

The Magician’s Elephant and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Beatryce Prophecy and The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo

WooHoo! You’re Doing Great! Sandra Boynton

The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates

Earn Prizes!

Miss the pizza coupons and pencils from your childhood summer reading program? Many local libraries now have summer reading programs for adults! For example, here’s the Book Bingo card from the SPL and their list of reading suggestions.

Here are a few suggestions of my own that explore relationships on set, on the stage, and in the great outdoors:

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

The Friendship List by Susan Mallery

They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey

Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

And I’m looking forward to these new releases coming out later this summer:

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

What are you looking forward to reading this season?

Lily Brooks-Dalton

These may not be your typical beach reads, but these two novels by Lily Brooks-Dalton are thought-provoking imaginings that are haunting in their realism, and entirely plausible in their prophecy. 

The Light Pirate

“There is a necessary tension between knowing how nature works in theory and witnessing it.”

Wanda is born during a hurricane. Although her father and brother work tirelessly as linemen to keep the lights on, eventually the strength of the increasingly frequent storms is too much for Florida’s infrastructure to handle. Most people become climate refugees as the state shuts down for good, but Wanda stays behind in the only home she’s ever known. Under the tutelage of Phyllis, a naturalist and survivalist, Wanda becomes adept at adaptation, the new superpower in this unrelentingly hostile environment.

Good Morning, Midnight

“He had never been satisfied and never would be. It wasn't success he craved, or even fame, it was history: he wanted to crack the universe open like a ripe watermelon, to arrange the mess of pulpy seeds before his dumbfounded colleagues. He wanted to take the dripping red fruit in his hands and quantify the guts of infinity to look back into the dawn of time and glimpse the very beginning. He wanted to be remembered.”

Augustine opts to remain in the Arctic after the rest of the scientists leave upon news of an impending disaster affecting the rest of the planet. In the hasty departure, he finds that a little girl, Iris, has been left behind. Meanwhile, Sully and her crew have just been to Jupiter and must speculate why all communications with Earth have been disrupted. Even though Augustine has Iris for company, he diligently tries to connect with others on his ham-radio. In this way, he’s able to connect with Sully who has been likewise scanning the frequencies for proof of life. Faced with an unknown future, human connection offers the only hope.