An Open Book November
Today, I’m joining Carolyn Astfalk and Catholic Mom for An Open Book. Here’s what I’ve been reading and/or working on for the past month:
Defending Human Dignity: Catholic Answers to Gender, Abortion, and Relativism by Marie Brousseau
Synopsis: In these essays, Canadian Catholic teacher and essayist Marie Brousseau addresses today’s most pressing moral controversies — from freedom of speech and religion to gender ideology, abortion, relativism, and beyond. With clarity, conviction, and compassion, she presents Catholic answers grounded in faith, science, and reason, offering a powerful defense of human dignity in our troubled age.
My review: This is an excellent book of essays, written from the viewpoint of a Canadian Catholic teacher. The author has done her research and explains Catholic teachings on human dignity and morality with finesse. Highly recommend!
The Cuckoo’s Calling (Cormoran Strike Book 1) by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Synopsis: Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling’s brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel’s suicide in “one of the best books of the year” (USA Today). After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office.
Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry — known to her friends as the Cuckoo — famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this.
Fast-paced and sharply drawn, this dazzling detective novel inspired Strike, the BBC crime drama series that has captivated millions of viewers worldwide.}]
My review: I’ve just started reading this, but it captured me immediately and I’m enjoying it so far!
The Midwife’s Advice by Gay Corter
Synopsis: Hannah Sokolow, the spirited heroine of Gay Courter’s international bestseller, “The Midwife,” returns in this powerful story to face new medical challenges in turn-of-the-century New York. As head midwife at Bellevue Hospital, Hannah sees her proud profession usurped by the male-dominated practice of obstetrics. So when a young immigrant woman seeks a solution to a troubling but delicate personal problem, Hannah takes a bold step toward the new medical frontier of sex therapy. Soon she is giving intimate advice not only to her immigrant patients, but also to the intellectual of Greenwich Village who inspire her with radical new ideas on such issues as birth control, sex education, and healthy care. And there are other momentous changes in store for Hannah. For when her husband follows his heart to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, Hannah follows hers—into a searing affair with a prominent doctor who is separated from her by faith, class, and marriage, but who is drawn to her by a fierce desire that matches her own.
My review: I’ve read this book several times, and it’s an intriguing story of a midwife in turn-of-the-century New York. There is some coarse language, and immoral acts are often portrayed as “necessary.” I wouldn’t recommend it for sensitive readers, but the story is excellent.
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
Synopsis: A #1 New York Times Best Seller, Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me gives us a unique perspective into the hidden world of Ted Bundy. Rule gives a chilling and intimate description of her time at a crisis hotline alongside her co-worker, the then charming, sensitive and trustworthy Ted Bundy, and the devastating realization that he was a brutal killer hiding in plain sight. After multiple arrests and an escape from jail, Bundy would later confess to the murders of at least thirty-six women and soon after was executed for three cases. Rule, a certified instructor for police training seminars, prosecutors and forensic science organizations, delves into how this savage killer — a man she thought she knew — could have fooled so many, including a professional like herself.
Now includes updated afterword written by Leslie Rule, Ann Rule’s daughter.
My review: I’ve also read this one before, but unlike with other true crime books, the author (now deceased) was actually a friend of Bundy’s, and so it’s an interesting juxtaposition between her writing the true crime story and writing about her friendship with Bundy. Highly recommended for true crime readers.
Synopsis: Hunting Eichmann is the first complete narrative of a relentless and harrowing international manhunt.
When the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich, Adolf Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished. Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time). The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you’d find in great spy fiction.
My review: My husband and I watched a movie based on this book, and I wanted to read the entire story. It is fascinating at times and somewhat slow at times, but overall, a compelling story about the creator of the “Final Solution” (Adolf Eichmann), and his desire to escape justice. Highly recommended.
