altlovesbooks

Good but not great/5 stars. I'm a huge fan of the microhistory genre, and I felt like this particular take on the history of the American road trip was way too broad/meandering. I loved the bits about the actual road trip, the history of, what things sprung up alongside the roads as a result of what changes, those parts were really interesting. I also learned Betty Ford was a CB user, who used the handle 'First Mama". Kinda love that.

What didn't work for me as much were the other tangents, the ones only peripherally related to road trips. For instance, while I enjoy video games and arcades, the history of arcade cabinets in hotels was kind of out of place. There's several rabbit holes that, while interesting in their own right, don't seem to quite fit here. Another thing that you will either like or not is that the author uses his own experiences as a kid on road trips with his family as segues into the various topics. While the (sometimes lengthy) anecdotes are funny, it sort of lent this microhistory a bit of a memoir feel, when all I wanted was to get back to the history topics.

So, again, good but not great. Nice little audiobook, but I probably won't revisit it.

Orsola Rosso is born into a family of glassmakers, grows up around glassmakers, and all she knows is glass. The book begins with glassmaking rivalry; the Rossos are competing against another family in the glass trade, but it's this other family that finally gives Orsola the chance she needs to start working glass for her family herself. As time passes, we see Murano and Venice change around them, but Orsola's family remains the same, with Orsola's glasswork holding things together. 500 years pass, and we get to see how changing times impacts the Rossos, and Orsola too.

You have to go into this book with an open mind and an ability to ignore glaring inconsistencies with the time skipping idea the book is predicated on. Some of the periods the book touches on are fleshed out in a meaningful way, while others that seemed equally important get only a brief mention, a brief chapter, or are otherwise glossed over before moving on to the next point in time. This time skipping idea was hard for me to get around at first; wouldn't Orsola question the passage of time? But eventually I stopped looking for answers and just enjoyed the book. It's a beautifully crafted story.

I guess my real hangup with this book was the ending. (ending spoilers here) I don't get why Orsola didn't realize that Antonio was dead, had died a long time ago, and that the dolphins she received were crafted by different people. She even points out that each one was crafted differently; to someone as familiar with glass as she was, you'd think that would tell her something.

I enjoyed this book in spite of the time elephant in the room though.

"I'm just reminding you that you can’t base a character on a real-life person and then not get sued."

Final tally:

Instances of the word 'snarl': 15

Instances of the words 'grump' or 'grumpy': 27

Instances of the word 'growl': 26

Instances of the word 'scowl': 13

For a book this size, north of 500 pages, I fully expected way more to happen. And not even just in the romance sense, just in the overall "is there a story here somewhere in this book with story in the title" sense. I fully admit I don’t normally read romance, but even my basic story need didn't feel met by this one.

Hazel is a writer. Or, was a writer. Or maybe still is in her mind, but hasn't really put anything out since her divorce, so she isn't actually in the minds of everyone who counts. Her friend and agent Zoey delivers an ultimatum – produce a book or get dropped. She ditches big city life for small town life in the hopes of finally finding inspiration, and she does…..in the form of tall, grumpy contractor hired to renovate her decrepit house. A whole town's worth of over-the-top personalities and chaotic shenanigans happens, with the overall goal being to save their small town from being absorbed by the larger city nearby. And of course, quirky sunshine writer and grumpy scowly contractor hook up.

This book was messy and chaotic, and not in a good way. I freely admit I haven't read any of the author's other books, but from reading reviews here, the chaos is even a bit much for long time author fans. The pages drip humor, and while it was fun in the beginning, it got really old really fast when the author is cracking jokes mid-sex, both out loud and in narration. Speaking of the actual reason we’re all here reading this book, it took the two characters half the book (that's roughly 250 pages) for them to go on their first date, and that wasn’t even a date. For some more detailed information, (romance spoilers here) Cam agrees to a FWB situation with Hazel for research purposes, so for a large chunk of the book even past this point they still aren't really a couple. Lots of sex is had, of course, but there's zero relationship development or chemistry. Even the overall story propping up the romance feels lacking. I guess I expected more to happen in a book of this size.

Finally, with Hazel being a writer herself, there's multiple points of the book where it feels like the author is speaking directly to the reader, and all of it felt shoehorned in. Lots of statements about how Hazel feels like her writing is discounted because she writes romance and not literary fiction, some of what feels like insider baseball about how the publishing industry and writer events works, and even a whole chapter dedicated to Hazel giving another character pointers on how to get started writing. None of it felt like it helped the overall story along any.

Just not my thing, I guess.

"Vendi, Vidi, Solvi."

Clayton Stumper is a puzzle unto himself -- as a baby, he was left on the doorstep of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers in a hat box with no note. Growing up with the house full of various puzzlers across many different disciplines left an impression on him, but as a young adult now, he wants to learn more about where he came from. Pippa, the woman who found him, knows, but all she left him after her death was a puzzle to solve. Never much of a puzzler, he nevertheless sets off to learn more about his parents, and himself in the process.

Right off the bat, we needed more Clayton in this story about Clayton. Interspersed with the chapters about this mystery surrounding his parents, we also have the past POV of Pippa, founding the Fellowship and bringing together all the disparate personalities that made the group what it was. Not a lot happens after the founding of the Fellowship though, making it feel more like a distraction from the actual plot with Clayton that matters than anything else.

I also wish Clayton was developed a bit more than he was. He seems like a nice guy, but really unable to adult on his own without Pippa or the Fellowship there to guide him along. Towards the end, he seems more willing to talk to people than he was, but that's really all the character development we get out of him.

I will say, in my physical copy at least, the inclusion of puzzles to actually solve was a nice touch.

I've never had the thought while reading a book that it was too well-researched, but I think that's why I didn't enjoy this one as much as other people did. It's clear the author did a ton of research for this book, but the amount of stuff shoehorned in made the flow feel clunky.

Yunxian (Lady Tan) studied illnesses, midwifery, and general female illnesses under her grandparents while growing up. There, she also met her lifelong friend Meiling, who was studying to be a midwife. They grow up together, learn together, and become inseparable, until Yunxian is sent away to a new household for her arranged marriage. Her new mother-in-law isn't exactly cruel, but she does forbid Yunxian from continuing to practice medicine on the women of the household, as well as from seeing Meiling. Yunxian struggles to find her place in this household, and has to figure out how to balance the wishes of her new family with her desire to practice medicine.

The author, through Yunxian, goes into minute detail about the various medical cases Yunxian experiences, making the overall story stall while the author explains some other obscure Chinese medical treatment. I also didn't really care for how unnatural the phrasing feels for some words, like 'child palace' for womb. It feels like maybe the Chinese was translated literally for some things and not others? It just felt off, to me.

The plot itself is a bit lacking as well. Most of the writing is spent on describing Chinese medicine, and the actual plot suffers periodically because of it. When the plot actually advances, it feels rushed, like the author wants to get right back into describing Chinese medicine but recognizes that a story has to exist somewhere. Many of the side characters within Lady Tan's circle felt weirdly flat as well, with the most egregious cases being her daughters. She talks a lot about how much she loves her daughters, but they barely exist in the pages.

So while the writing is actually pretty great (as Lisa See's books tend to be), I thought this one was kind of a miss for me.