From One Book Lover

   Get a glimpse behind the façade when Ruby Lennox shows us what it takes to make and live in a family in Behind the Scenes at the Museum . The titular museum is York Castle Museum, which exhibits façades of local houses, much like the one occupied by the Lennox family. As Kate Atkinson weaves her tale, Ruby’s first day is spent in part at the Museum Gardens, with her mother and sister, Gillian. I loved the structure of the book: beginning with her conception, Ruby is very much in the “now,” and everything feels immediate and new, with glimpses of foretelling the future. Coupled with these current events are  “appendices” interspersed non-sequentially, revealing family secrets that challenge the fictions perpetrated in the family history Ruby tells. She knows what she knows, so her tale is limited to her scope of knowledge, what she sees and believes. Ruby is our narrator, but is she reliable? Clues pop up indicating that something is flickering just beyond her re...

Bill Bryson is right. The summer of 1927 was an amazing year. in One Summer: America, 1927 ,  he convinces his readers in his usual engaging, fascinating and conversational way. Lindbergh? Check. Babe Ruth? Check. Clara Bow, Jack Dempsey, Sacco and Vanzetti? Check, check and double check. He has them all, plus storms and floods, Hoover and Coolidge, a few extra aviators, race relations, gangsters, Prohibition, Broadway musicals and Mount Rushmore. In no time, you're wishing you lived in 1927 (albeit the safer, wealthier lifestyle). (Hint: it wasn't as a baseball player.) Bryson does not skate across the top of his topics. He makes sure you understand clearly why aviation was in its heyday in the United States. He is clear about how Prohibition became, remained, then finally was defeated as law. He does it not only with the Roosevelts, Coolidges, Lindberghs and Capones, but also with the individuals with whom you may not be as familiar: Philo Farnsworth, Bill Tilden, Wi...