#tim junkin

[e-b-reads]

35 and 78 for books you read in 2024 :)

Thank you!

35. The Waterman, Tim Junkin

Oh you hit on the one that StoryGraph picked out in my wrap-up as "least shelved," i.e. only 2 other users have interacted with it? I really enjoyed it! Probably because the main character (and, I think, the author) feels such a strong connection to the places and people around the Chesapeake Bay, and I relate. It's set in the 1970s (written in the 90s) and is sort of a book in two parts - first the main character quits college to move home and be a waterman after his dad dies, and then Hurricane Agnes hits and messes with the Bay ecologically so he has to move down to Virginia from Maryland to crab there...and gets sort of caught up in a plot related to some drug runners, which is when it gets a little less introspective and a little more thriller-y. I still liked it a lot.

78. A Rogue's Company, Allison Montclair (Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery #3)

A middle-of-the-series book! I don't remember anything about this book specifically (as opposed to the series as a whole) to mention, but it's overall a fun read, and enough different from other historical mystery series to be worth picking up if you like that kind of thing!

Set in post WWII England, two very different women (one a former spy, one a war widow with a young son and rich in-laws) set up a marriage bureau where they can matchmake clients - except they keep getting drawn into mysteries and capers instead. I liked that, although both ladies have various (war-related) traumas, they deal with them and even go to (period-typical, I think) therapy, rather than being crippled by them or ignoring them. Also I enjoyed the resolutions to each book - generally there's the kind of scene where the ladies go "oh I have a plan," and then we as readers have to wait and have the plan revealed during the action, making the ladies look smart and the baddies look amusingly silly. The dialogue can be pretty funny at points, too!

(send me a number from 1 to 208 and I'll tell you about a book of 2024! There's a good chance it will be a middle book in a series!)

[e-b-reads]

Books of the Month: Feb 2024

At this point I'm doing books of the months posts late more by design than by accident (I mean, several were by accident, but now...). It's interesting to look back with a little more distance and see what reads stuck with me from the previous month. This time it was:

My Brother Sam is Dead (James Lincoln Collier): I picked this up literally years ago for free, thinking I've heard of this so I should probably read it. Despite the title being right there, so you know what's coming, it was still a little more violent than I expected, and sort of more sad (although obviously I knew it would be sad! But he still got me). I am including it on the list because of a post I read recently about some people failing to grasp that there's nuance in history. A good book about a boy - young man - and his shrinking family, and how they're mostly just trying to live through the events happening around them.

Thus Was Adonis Murdered (Sarah Caudwell): Now for something completely different! Well, someone still dies in this one, but otherwise. I had heard of these (this is first in a short mystery series) before, but I didn't realize how much of an ensemble cast they have, or how hilarious they are! Set contemporaneously with when they're written, so early 1980s. Oxford Professor Hilary Tamar (gender unclear) seems to never spend time in Oxford, but instead hangs out with a gaggle of young lawyers (solicitors? I admit the British law stuff loses me a little, but it's kind of meant to) in London and in various cities around the world where they keep falling into situations where someone was murdered, and write each other very funny letters about it. I can't describe these sufficiently but I recommend them wholeheartedly.

And then I'm going to do something I never have yet, and list a couple honorable mentions. These were special to me for specific reasons, but might be exactly what someone is looking for so I'll list them too!

Call the Nurse (Mary J. MacLeod): This is one of those books written by someone who had experiences and wanted to write about them, rather than someone who wanted to write and so chose some experiences to write about. True stories from a woman (a nurse) who moved with her family to the Scottish Hebrides in the...1960s?? (Someone is currently borrowing my copy! I can't check, I think that's the right time period.) It was given to me by a very good friend; she'd read it a while ago but had trouble finding a copy to gift. So she was very triumphant when she found one, and I was touched. I enjoyed it as a book to read in the evenings, one chapter at a time.

The Waterman (Tim Junkin): This is fictional but kind of fits with the above as a book that's about a specific place and time as much as about a plot (though it does have a plot! gets exciting at the end). It was written in the 90s, takes place in the 70s, but though things have changed a lot, there's a lot of things that are still true about the communities around the Chesapeake Bay today, and I really liked it.

[e-b-reads]

They reached Pecks by five-thirty. By quarter to six they were on the river, which was like pitch in the moonless dark, and as they churned into the Choptank, they watched the first sluice of light invade the distant horizon. The breeze from the Bay was moderate. Sipping from the thermos of coffee and whiskey he had mixed, Byron worked the upright tiller post while Clay put on his oilskin apron, which had been Pappy's. Gradually the sky uncovered itself, and the silver water glimmered pastels.

- The Waterman, Tim Junkin

[e-b-reads]

After a while, Kate traced a line down his arm with her finger. "Clay?" she said. "Do you think a person can love two people at the same time? Really love them?" With the question, he began smoothing out the sand in front of him. He took his time, as though he were preparing a tablet and about to write the answer across it. "That's a hard one," he finally responded. "Yes. Maybe. But I'm not sure it would work if you tried to act on it."

- The Waterman, Tim Junkin