Summing up January – I read 10 books and reviewed ALL of them here at this Books and Pie blog. I then slacked on the slide into February? So I’ll do some mini-reviews of the 5 books read so for:
My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi Challenge: for TOB2023 and fits #ReadICT categories of Time and LGBTQIA+
My favorite of today’s post, this has been considered Science Fiction and I might put it into the Mythology genre. In 2016, a volcano rises out of the lake in Central Park and becomes a global story. We meet lots of interesting people and follow their reactions and adventures. It’s quite wacky!! at times comic, at times somber – the chapters are interrupted by names of victims of 2016 incidents, often police brutality and mass violence. It is set across time, multiple time realities; it dips back and forth, and includes a time travel storyline of a boy who goes to 16th century Mexico. Not at all melodramatic, all the characters inspired positive reactions and I was invested in hope they all end up OK. A morality tale to wake up and pay attention? Four slices of pie, no pie mentioned.
Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh Challenge: #WiaN2023 QXZ category / Audible
Selected because it was free and I recognized the author’s name – this is my first experience of her work. The goodreads reviews are NOT HAPPY that she published this and never attributed that it is based on a true story; some feel she stole it. It was VERY short; I had originally assumed it was a full-length fiction novel.
It’s about a man who is accused of killing his wife because no one in town even knew he HAD a wife! She never ever left the house and had zero contact with other people. How does that even happen in today’s world?! Fascinating but not that fascinating. Three slices of pie, “cookies and pie” mention.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin Challenge: for TOB2023, #ReadICT LGBTQIA+ category / Audible
I had originally decided that this book was NOT going to be my cup of tea – that if I read the first 10 pages or so, I could satisfactorily cross it off the list. But then I ended up with physical books of all my remaining TOB unreads — except this one, and had one credit to burn at Audible. I couldn’t not listen to this audiobook! – especially, considering how many of this year’s slate have been books that I just couldn’t give proper due. (I want my Completist status, at least, to be considered TRUE EFFORT) so … and DONE! However. I sped this up to 200% for the last third or so until the last 30 minutes. I think I got (had?!) enough of it. Three slices, only raspberry pi technology mentioned.
In your face sex and violence with trans-representation.
Challenge: for TOB2023 / Audible
A very interesting book, a short book, with one man experiencing a current crisis that provokes memories of past trauma, and trying to hold on the best he can. The ending is a gut punch!
Three slices of pie. No pie mentioned.
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley Challenge: for TOB2023 / eBook / Libby
I didn’t give this book the attention it deserved. I wanted to be totally captivated but I was distracted by book-slump-disease, too-many-books-at-once-disorder, and guilt. I ended up reading reviews that praised it and I would go back and read 2-3 pages before life intervened and I was off doing something else. I ended up giving it the skim-skip, touching here and there to keep the story-thread alive if possible and then, finally, I read the ending. BAD CARE. I called it done and now apologize to the author and my readers that this “time and place” was not this book’s ‘day‘. BUT I do promise to watch for this author and read her next (this was her debut and she wasn’t even 20 when she wrote it!) Perhaps, I will come back and read Nightcrawling with full attention in the future. I am giving it 4 slices. Yes, it had pie! Sweet potato pie.
It shouldn’t be a crime to be poor in America.
“My hands are resting on the glass counter, the sweet potato pie symmetrical and staring up at me, taunting.”
Chocolate Cherry Pie made for the Super Bowl and because February 20 is Cherry Pie Day. YAY Chiefs!
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by Erich Maria Remarque, Random House Trade 2013 (orig 1928), 227 pages, translated from the German by A.W. Wheen 
by E.Lockhart. has considerable space devoted to a cross-country adventure eating at pie shoppes along the way. Who wouldn’t LOVE that? However, it wasn’t til I had completed the book that I realized that Lockhart was an author of a book I loathed. (We Were Liars. UGH)
by Sara Novic has a bit about a character wearing a Miss Sweet Potato Pie costume!
has multiple mentions of pie and also features a town dance where eligible young ladies bring a tempting pie to attract a future husband. Pivotal pie plot point, methinks.
features a diner that has a pie theme – but not any old pie theme: Avant Garde pie: new and unusual — which is ME! and how I came into my pie passion. 
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