Book Log 2022 #48: The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk

Liesl Weiss works behind the scenes in the rare book department of a large university's library. She's put front and center when her boss has a stroke and she has to run the department, which would be fine except she makes a discovery pretty early on that would cause scandal and potentially see someone go to jail.

Liesl has to balance what's best for the department with what will keep the donors giving money to the school, all while trying to solve the mystery she's uncovered (as well as a second mystery that is coincidental to be unrelated).

As someone who's made a career in higher education - including a stint in a school library - the subject matter was very appealing. The author, herself a librarian, brings a lot of that experience to bear, and there was a lot of familiarity to the college politics and the personalities involved. I liked the book well enough but had a non-specific feeling of it not being 100 percent what it could be. I don't have a good explanation of where that feeling came from, honestly. It's definitely worth giving a try if you like campus novels.

 Book Log 2022 #47: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

This book, expanded from the New Yorker article "The Family that Built an Empire of Pain," tells the story of the Sackler family, whose fortune and later downfall came via their company Purdue Pharma and the drug oxycodone, which fueled the opioid epidemic. The book shows in great detail how the family continued to market the drug even when it was clear it was being prescribed in a way to invite abuse, and the ways in which they tried to avoid liability. It also follows the people who saw the problem and their fight to bring the family, and the company, to justice.

This is a tremendous book, long but well worth the investment of time. The focus on the family is especially helpful, as it puts names and faces to actors who, in the vast majority of coverage, got to hide behind the family and company names. While the subjects are different, I think of this book as a companion piece to Bad Blood in how both displayed how greed and ego can be used to dupe the public and, if unchecked, can cause great harm.

 Book Log 2022 #46: Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville

Jack Lennon is looking forward to a quiet Christmas with his daughter, while trying to overcome his grief and guilt at the events of Collusion. That doesn't come to pass, as violence ramps up with one of the local gangs, related to the killing of one of their own by a woman who was trafficked into Northern Ireland for prostitution. Her escape has its own repercussions, as her supposed savior isn't what he appears to be.

I liked this book more than the first two in the series. It's the first book not to be focused on the Troubles and related issues, which allows the plot to develop outside of the boundaries of that conflict. I feel like the writing style changed a bit as well.  I'm more likely to continue with the series now, though still not fully drawn in.

 Book Log 2022 #45: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

In this book - the third in a loose trilogy looking at how man shapes the natural world - Macfarlane travels ancient paths (mostly on land, but also at sea) to understand what they meant to the people that shaped them and what they mean to us today. He pulls in a variety of natural, geographic, and literary references to put these trails into context, with the help of traveling partners and strangers he meets along the way.

I liked the book, I feel like it's a spiritual cousin to John McPhee's nature writing. The styles aren't the same, but there's some communion between their work as far as trying to come to a deeper understanding of natural history and the natural world within a current context. I found some of the travels more interesting than others, but felt positive about the whole.

 Book Log 2022 #44: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

A girl grows up alone in the marshes of North Carolina, learning how to fend for herself while becoming familiar with the rhythms of life in the wild. Shunned by townsfolk and bullied out of school after one day, she lives alone but eventually falls into the orbits of two local boys, one a friend of her brother, the other the high school's star quarterback. A love triangle ensues, until one of the boys turns up dead - with the girl as the main (and only) suspect.

I liked this more than expected, at least up until the end, which felt a little forced and not particularly surprising. There's an additional twist at the end unrelated to the murder which is a little more surprising, though it didn't really change my overall opinion of the book. 

 Book Log 2022 #43: The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt

I wound up reading this to fulfill the reading challenge of a book mentioned in another book, though at this point I couldn't tell you what the other book was.  I wound up choosing it based on having played the villain in a grade school play adapted from the book. It was the apex of my theatrical career, as I had the most lines, got to wear a purple velour cape as part of my costume, had a song, and (spoiler alert) a death scene. 

Oh, right, the book. The prime minister of a kingdom is trying to write a dictionary, and gets stuck when trying to define 'delicious.' The king and queen object to his definition ("Delicious is fried fish"), so the prime minister sends his stepson out to ask everyone in the kingdom how they'd define the word. 

At some point there's an uprising in the kingdom, with the villain taking control of the water supply (though in my memory of the play, the villain acts to get his own definition of delicious - the taste of walnuts - chosen for the dictionary). Various mystical creatures are involved in the story and its resolution.

It was fun to read the book and compare it to my memories of the play (which are likely not as accurate as I'd like them to be). This was an early work for Babbitt, who may be best remembered for Tuck Everlasting, which I remember as being hugely popular at the time we did the play.