Legs Hearts Minds by Chris Jones

Legs Hearts Minds by Chris Jones is a powerful and well-written memoir subtitled Loss and Its Remedies.

Jones begins the book in 2016 with finding out his wife having an affair with his friend. They're in a small town in Ontario and the former friend makes a show of being seen. Also, the book is about his relationship with his two sons, and his love of soccer, especially the English soccer team of Burnley. Chunks of the book are devoted to the team and Jones's relationship with it as a fan. In the final part of the book, Jones details his mom getting diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and her battle with it.

It's a gutting, but also hopeful book. It features someone who has struggled with mental health in the past having to confront and get to the other side of a horrible situation. Things really can get better. As Jones writes, we go again. Also in the book is the depiction of the Canadian health care system, working for people.

The book jacket features "overwhelmed by sorrow and rage, Jones contemplated suicide. He fought to carry on, for his two sons if no one else, only to end up in an emergency room. To return to himself, he embarked on a journey to understand who he is and the mistakes he has made, to let go of anger and forgiveness, ands to give himself over to something: an underdog English soccer team from an underdog northern town called Burnley."

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is a murder mystery set in the English countryside in 1950. The novel stars eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, a precocious chemist living in Buckshaw, a decaying English mansion shared with her father, older sisters Ophelia and Daphne, and Dogger the gardener. 

A dead bird is found on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak, then Flavia hears her father arguing with someone in the house. She that night finds the same man lying outside in the garden and watches him take his dying breath. Inspector Hewitt comes to the mansion, and later arrests Flavia's father for the murder, which she works to solve, and finds herself in the middle of it.

When Flavia's father arguing with the man, she hears mention of someone named Twining dying thirty years prior, with her father noting that he and the man responsible for it. Flavia learns that the man who died in her garden was Horace Bonepenny, and that Twining had been a schoolmaster at Greyminster, which her father attended with Bonepenny. Just prior to his death, Mr. Twining had set up for several boys to view an exceedingly rare postage stamp, one of a set of two, owned by the head of the school. The three boys were Bonepenny, Bob Stanley, and her father, and Bonepenny grabbed the stamp and burned it as part of a magic trick, but then said that he erred and it actually burned.

Back to present day in the novel, Flavia meets a man who said his name was Pemberton, and he writing a book on English country homes like theirs. Flavia goes to the inn where Bonepenny was staying and discovers hidden two rare stamps, including the one stolen by Bonepenny and Stanley from the headmaster's office. The two men had recently stolen the other stamp, which belonged to King George, and Stanley planned to murder his conspirator Bonepenny, pin the crime on Flavia's father, and keep both stamps for himself. It's a fine book and is the the first of an eventual series on chemist / mystery solver Flavia de Luce.

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon is a short and fun novel that includes Harold (an older man whose wife Edie is sick), Kate (their adult daughter who had been sent away), Adrian (a boy who took piano lessons from Edie), Scout (a vacuum who loves To Kill a Mockingbird), Watch, Fridge, Clock, and Auto (all exactly those things). 

The book is set in a future where society is run by the Grid, AI built to simplify tasks, that takes over virtually every task and decision. Machines (including household appliances) follow directives, have personalities, and think. 

Watch was tasked by the Grid with running Harold's house. The appliances in it have information on everything, and follow three protocols; to prevent pain, to do their duty, and to only communicate with a human if asked a question. 

Auto was connected to the Grid, more so than appliances inside the house, and the Grid decided who could travel, with Watch requesting Kate be allowed to return home after her mother's passing (so she could help the process of the Grid reallocating the home to a family now that only one human lived there).

Kate had been sent away for hacking into machines, taking a self-driving car and driving it herself, and as her punishment, was forced to work for the Grid, figuring out how to hack into systems so the Grid could then shut off those avenues. She has no intention of fulfilling her task to help have her father removed from his house, and the boy Adrian came regularly to practice the piano, in advance of an exam. There's also mention of the Dissidents, people living apart from the Grid, and noted throughout the novel is Harold's love of books, and how the Grid intends to take them. Kate told her father that the Grid was taking artifacts, things with human knowledge and cultural significance. Scout then has a idea to fix things so Harold doesn't have to leave, wiping the record of Edie's death. Kate goes with the Dissidents, and Adrian rescues Scout who goes with her.

There's interesting ideas in the book about sentience, happiness, aesthetics, and free will. It's a clear answer to the question of whether the machines working for people or not, and the book opens with "there was a time, not so long ago, when refrigerators could not dream and vacuum cleaners could not weep."