“This Party’s Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals” by Erica Buist

At first, this book, with its dancing skeletons on the cover, didn’t impress me. The author discussed a loss she had suffered, mentioning that Americans don’t grant a bereaved person much respect or attention when the person being mourned falls outside of a few clear categories – immediate family being the most prominent.

Then Ms. Buist, able to work without going into an office, departed on a world tour to check out death festivals and practices in various cultures. I didn’t feel particularly responsive to what she wrote about Mexico and Nepal.

But back in the USA, she stumbled onto transhumanism, of which I had been wholly unaware! I missed it! OMG. (I don’t like missing things.) Transhumanists, according to Ms. Buist, believe that we can and should develop technology that will permit us to live forever as CYBORGS. Just keep replacing your organic parts (including your brain) with well-designed machinery, and you can live forever.

Transhumanists consider it weak to “accept” death. They detest the contemporary American “death positivity” movement, which seeks to overcome the taboo against talking about death and encourages people to plan for their final days. Ms. Buist analyzes these movements in terms of both gender and socioeconomic status (relative privilege), and it gets VERY interesting. Why are most tranhumanists male and many “death positive” spokespeople female? (Did she miss Atul Gawande?) She also analyzes the Mexican Santa Muerte movement, which translates roughly to “Holy Death”, symbolized by a female death figure to whom one can pray for a delay in leaving this life. (Okay, I missed this, too. And it is somehow related to narcotics trafficking.) Both the Mexican government and the Roman Catholic church disapprove of Santa Muerte, going so far as to destroy shrines. I’m pretty sure this hasn’t gotten to New Jersey.

Will Erica Buist tackle the controversial “medical aid in dying” movement? I’m only on page 139 of 296. Six more countries to go! I definitely plan to keep reading.

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“The Girl Who Reads on the Metro” by Christine Feret-Fleury, translated by Ros Schwartz

This little book (172 small pages) could probably be classified as “magical realism”. It contains just a hint of the supernatural, the appealing notion that books respond to people, want to be read, want attention. Aside from that, it’s a simple story about the transformative power of reading. Anyone who ever REALLY gets lost in a book will understand.

Juliette lives a safe and quiet life, but she’s endlessly curious about the people she sees reading books on the Paris metro. She stumbles into a place marked “Books Unlimited”. It’s not quite a store. Sometimes it’s referred to as a “depot”. It’s not clear where the books come from, but they arrive in a steady stream.

Before the dust settles, not only has Juliette quit her unsatisfying job, but so have her two colleagues, each moving towards fulfillment of a happily cherished dream.

This book is being marketed for Book Clubs. I think it will be popular! I could happily spend some time imagining backstories and alternative futures for Feret-Fleury’s loveable characters. And there’s an extensive book list included!

“The Bodies in the Library” and “Murder is a Must” by Marty Wingate, First Edition Library Mysteries #1 and #2

Note cat on both covers!

This new mystery series by Marty Wingate is great fun! I’ve already read two of them. I regret that my Library hasn’t got her other mystery series. Time to turn to Kindle. 

So what is the fictional First Edition Library? A very wealthy widow in the coastal English city of Bath specializes in collecting first editions from the “Golden Age” of mystery writing, mostly by women. Authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Protagonist Hayley Burke becomes curator of this fabulous collection. She even gets to LIVE in the Library!

Aside with the usual problem with mysteries (real life rarely produces interesting crimes or clever murderers), what do we learn? That British women drink a tremendous amount of tea, and almost as much wine. They talk to cats and to portraits. 

Now I want to go back and read piles of classic mysteries.

“Glamour Girls” by Marty Wingate

Marty Wingate is mostly a (cozy) mystery series writer, and my local library is regrettably deficient in her works. Glamour Girls is a standalone World War II historical fiction/romance. Wingate was inspired by the autobiography of Mary Wilkins Ellis (1917-2018), whose exciting life story has fortunately been preserved in several formats. See photo above.

Glamour Girls is part of a recent spate of works pertaining to the role of women in World War II. I read Code Girls in 2017. 

We (the baby boomers) have been subjected to so much discussion of the “greatest generation”, our parents who fought World War II. It is disingenuous to think either the US or Great Britain (setting for Glamour Girls) was completely “united” during that war. Wingate includes anecdotes that show the cracks in the armor. For example, an air raid warden is caught looting. 

This book is strong on both plot and atmosphere, and the protagonist is both believable and appealing. The plot reflects the shocking uncertainty of life during wartime.

Wingate follows (perhaps unknowingly!) the habit of Patrick O’Brian (of Aubrey-Maturin fame) in taking her “action” sequences (crashes, near misses…) from historical records. She says she filled in her heroine’s personal life (romance, family drama) from her own imagination. It works.

This book is a good read.